At BRIM Anti-Bullying Software, we recently completed a random audit of one hundred high school and middle school web sites across the country that had links for parents and students either to get information on bullying or to report bullying incidents. The result of our audit is shocking. Almost 30% of the links were broken or non-functional with some directing the inquiry to companies that have gone out of business. Administrators that allow this to happen to should be fired for gross negligence. At BRIM Anti-Bullying Software, we check for administrative activity on our platform to ensure school and student utilization. One school web site had a link that actually launched a virus! How does this happen? Thank goodness for our antivirus that immediately stopped the attack. We called the school to inform them of the issue and we will check back to see if they have resolved the virus challenge.
A deeper dive into our audit revealed that nearly 40% of the schools that had links were sending students to a government web site that offered information on aspects of school and cyber bullying but that offered no way to anonymously report bullying incidents! How low of a priority is student safety when a school does not provide a safe way for anonymous student reporting? The BRIM Anti-Bullying app costs less per day than a cup of coffee….
In May 2022, we reached out to school board members in several states where we found the majority of the broken internet links or other web page related issues that pertain to bullying. An astonishingly low number of these board members replied with dignified or legitimate responses. One long term South Carolina school board member did show concern and BRIM will be conducting a demonstration soon for the entire school board of that district. Unfortunately, the others did not show the same level of concern for their students and are satisfied collecting over $1000.00 per month as a board member shirking their duty to student safety.
Anonymous reporting is instrumental in reducing bullying incidents and the BRIM application is easy to implement and use while being extremely affordable.
