The

Undeniable

Ruth

®

…and the Ruth shall set you free!

  • I Was Cyberbullied – Part 4 of 4

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    Ruth Carter

    This is the final installation of my four-part story with cyberbullying. You can read it from the beginning here. Back to the story . . .

    After finals were over, I filed a formal report with the Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities. They said there was nothing they could do at that point, but that people like her engage in the same behavior repeatedly. They suggested that I send my bully an email informing her that any future contact was unwanted and would be reported to the university as harassment. If she contacted me again, it would be actionable. I disagreed with their assessment, but I sent my bully the email.

    Seclusion & Serenity by Iwona Erskine-Kellie

    Thankfully, my bully only had one more semester of school and we didn’t have any classes together. If we had been in any of the same classes, I would have asked the school to make her change. It was still nerve-wracking to see her on campus, but we never had direct contact again. Last I heard, she moved to California. Shortly after graduation, I blocked my bully and my other former exec on Facebook. Doing that made me feel like I was closing the door on that chapter of my life.

    I had an unsettling experience last week with my bully – she asked to connect on LinkedIn! I was surprised she would want to be a connection given her animosity towards me. I suspect she uploaded all her contacts to her LinkedIn account and requested to connect with all of them, not thinking that there might be people in her contacts list that she doesn’t want to be connected to. I looked for the ability to block someone on LinkedIn and was shocked to learn that LinkedIn doesn’t provide that ability. The best you can do is deny someone the ability to connect with you. I expected them to have a stronger anti-harassment provision. I would like to block her on that site too, but that is not an option at this time.

    So there’s my story. It was hellaciously stressful to be the victim of cyberbullying. I’m so grateful that I had support from my friends, my family, and the law school. I can’t imagine how much worse it could have been if I had to endure it alone. Unfortunately, that’s what happens to too many children. They’re ostracized from their peers and they’re too afraid to ask for help from their parents or teachers.

    To all the victims of cyberbullying, I know it’s hard to admit that you’re being bullied, and I know it’s scary to ask for help, but do it. You don’t have to go through this alone and you don’t have to continue to be the victim.

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  • I Was Cyberbullied – Part 3 of 4

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    Ruth Carter

    This is the third part of my four-part story with cyberbullying. You can read it from the beginning here. Back to the story . . .

    Walking Away by Jeremy Raff-Reynolds

    At that point, I was done with her harassment. I investigated whether I had options for recourse through the school given that I was experiencing student-on-student harassment and all the emails were sent over the ASU email system. My research revealed provisions of the Arizona Board of Regents Student Code of Conduct that prohibited harassment and discriminatory activities.

    I set up a meeting with the Assistant Dean of the law school where I explained what had been occurring and showed him all her emails. By then the semester was drawing to a close. He and I decided that the best course of action was for him to meet with my bully after she was finished with finals to discuss the inappropriateness of her behavior. At the end of the meeting, I turned over my copies of the emails to him to put in her permanent file. If anyone calls the school to ask for a reference for my bully, they may be told a report was made against her for cyberharassment.

    My bully reportedly left town immediately after her last final, so the assistant dean was unable to get her into his office for a meeting. Instead, he spoke with her by phone. According to him, she wasn’t very receptive to what he had to say and didn’t take any responsibility for her behavior. Shortly after the call ended, she made the following post on Facebook:

    “ruth carter is a giant cunt and a poor person. tell the world I said this.”

    She must have realized that creating that post was a poor decision and removed it, but not before I took a screenshot of it and sent it to the school.

    The assistant dean and I were astonished by her behavior, and I had concerns about her level of impulsivity. I still had one final to go, and the finals schedule is post publicly, so she had access to information regarding when/where I would be on campus. We weren’t certain that she had actually left town or that she wouldn’t come back.

    We decided it was be better to be safe than dead. To protect my physical safety, we decided it would be best if I took my last final in a different location, so I took it in a windowless room, by myself, where only one other person knew where I was.

    Read the conclusion to my cyberbullying story in Part 4 of I Was Cyberbullied.

     

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  • I Was Cyberbullied – Part 2 of 4

    ·

    Ruth Carter

    This is the second of my four-part experience with cyberbullying. You can read Part 1 here. Back to the story . . .

    Alone by Tanya Little

    For weeks, I was anxious every time I went to campus. I was so nervous that it made me sweat profusely. I stopped wearing professional clothes to school out of fear I would ruin them with sweat stains. Instead, I wore jeans and a t-shirt, and kept a fresh shirt in my locker. It was common for me to change my shirt during lunch because my first one was soaked with sweat. I got down to my lowest weight in law school that semester because I was too anxious to eat and I was sweating so much.

    My bully was in one of my classes that semester – trial advocacy – and she sat right next to me. There were only 12 of us in the class and only 12 seats in our seating area. I didn’t want to ask someone to exchange seats because it would have brought up questions about the situation. So every day we had class, I sat there, sweating like crazy, but refusing to let her know how much she bothered me.

    My trial advocacy final was a mock trial. Thankfully my bully wasn’t my co-counsel or the opposing counsel for my mock trial. Our trials were on a Friday night, and we didn’t finish until after 10pm. Her group finished before mine. I was petrified walking to the parking garage that night. I didn’t know if she’d be waiting there for me. I was so relieved when I didn’t see anyone in the garage.

    My goal for the student club that my bully and I were executives for became to get the club through the end of the school year, pass it off the next year’s executives, and be done with my bully and the other executive. The club’s faculty advisor caught wind of what was going on and asked to meet with me. When I told her about the emails, she said my bully was out of line and she would do what she could to help get the club through the end of the year.

    Our advisor called a meeting for all the executives to plan the remaining weeks of the semester. When my bully and the other exec tried to bring up the gala invitations, she immediately cut them off and refocused on the club’s future. I walked out of the meeting with the impression that my bully and the other exec were not going to stop trying to turn the gala invitations into a group decision and that they were going to view everything I did in a negative light. I decided at that point to resign my leadership role. It wasn’t worth my effort to keep putting up with them.

    All the executives in this club were equals when I was in it. We didn’t have designated roles like president and vice president. All club decisions were made by a majority vote. However, I was often the point person on projects and a lot of people sought me out when they had a question about the club. After I resigned, I had nothing to do with the club. When anyone asked me about the club, I referred them to the club’s email address.

    Shortly before I got my bully, I was the point person on an event put on by my and another law student club. The post-event paperwork didn’t get done until after I resigned. An exec from the other club started it and asked for my help, but by then I couldn’t sign off on anything because I wasn’t a leader anymore. I referred her to the club’s remaining execs.

    I could have done the work in less than 3 minutes, but I wanted to take a stand. I wanted my bully and the other exec to know that when they make it impossible to work with them, I’m not going to work with them. By then, I had no obligations to them or the club. I responded to all their emails by politely informing them that it would be inappropriate for a non-executive to fill out executive paperwork. That resulted in my bully sending me the nastiest email to date:

    “Ruth you are a giant cunt and a poor person.”

    Read how I responded to her nastiness in Part 3 of I Was Cyberbullied.

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