Classmates respond with positivity

A group of Pflugerville High School students may have fallen victim to “cyberbullying” Saturday when their pictures appeared on a Facebook page.

According to PHS students and a parent, an online Facebook page entitled “Panther Book” was anonymously posted Saturday morning with photos of 55 PHS girls, each accompanied by a slanderous caption.

“My daughter called me and told me about it. She said ‘Mom, do you remember watching ‘Mean Girls’? Remember that book they put together? Somebody put something like that book on Facebook,’” said Liz, a parent of a victim of the online album, who wished to be referred only by her first name.

The book, a reference to a book in the 2004 film “Mean Girls,” had been removed from the Web before Liz logged online later that night.

“My first reaction was, this Internet is getting way out of hand. Kids are mean enough as it is sometimes, and they’re able to put something out there where anybody can have access to it, and it’s one person’s opinion,” Liz said. “Somebody took the time to sit down and think of something negative and ugly to say about each one of those girls.”

Before Panther Book was removed from Facebook, it received dozens of comments from PHS students, students said. Within hours of the page’s creation another Facebook page was created entitled “Panther Book 2.” This new page contained an album of the exact same 55 pictures, only this time all of the captions were complimentary of the subjects.

“We decided that these girls should have something nice said about them, because most of what the original book’s author said was just untrue and mean,” Panther Book 2 co-creator Kinsey Proctor said.

Proctor said she checked her Facebook page for updates as soon as she woke up. She said she read several comments about Panther Book and then called friend Matthew Hamilton to see what the online buzz was about.

“It was just made to tear people down, and that’s exactly was it was going to do to someone. If I had seen my picture on there I would have wondered what I did to make this person mad… I would make my self-esteem go down a lot,” recent PHS graduate Proctor said. “Matt had the idea of making Panther Book 2 to turn the photo album into a positive thing.”

Between Proctor, 18, and Hamilton, 17, the two knew all but four of their schoolmates in the album.

“We wanted to include everyone that was in the original because we felt that everyone should be respected,” PHS senior Hamilton said.

Just like the original, word of Panther Book 2 spread quickly among PHS students. Liz heard about it from her daughter as well.

“With the original, the damage is done,” Liz said. “But I went through and read every comment on the Part 2 book, and I thought, ‘I wish that there were sites where you could just get encouraging words.’”

Proctor and Hamilton said they hope their album helps undo whatever hurt the original album did to its victims.

“I’ve seen a lot of [cyberbullying] on Facebook or on MySpace. I just didn’t really think of it as bullying until this whole Panther Book thing came to light,” Proctor said.

Pflugerville ISD issued this statement about the incident in an e-mail:

“Although the District has no jurisdiction over this matter due to the summer break, we want to want to assure the Pflugerville ISD community that bullying of any sort will not be tolerated at Pflugerville ISD Schools.”

Nevertheless, Liz thinks the district can use this example to raise awareness.

“I was watching a show one day where it showed how many lives have been lost where kids have committed suicide because of cyberbullying,” Liz said. “I think that kids need to have an awareness. You don’t know what that other person is going through in their life – that person you’re bullying. You don’t know where they are emotionally. And when their peer influence is so heavy on them, for you to think something’s funny, or you’re mad at somebody … to think somebody could take their life because of it – I think that’s bothersome. I think that’s where the district needs to come in and just bring a better awareness about cyberbullying. They’ve done that in the past with abusive dating.”

The original Panther Book is no longer online. As of Wednesday morning Panther Book 2 has 439 fans on Facebook.

“We’ve had very positive feedback. People like what we’re doing. The people who were originally affected, the girls on the page – some of them have even come out to us and said thank you for reversing the damage,” Proctor said.