By Cassie Bullock
HHS has recently become abuzz with discussions about the Facebook group for the freshman class of 2016. The student-run group includes a majority of the freshman class and has begun to include posts unrelated to school, with select students using the group to post hurtful comments or to start arguments between one another.

Almost all freshman have heard of these fights, as well as most of the upper grades.

Freshman class president Austin Schofield explained, “People were disrupting it, and it became an outlet for people to bully other people, so we have a website now.”

The new class of 2016 website is able to be viewed by everyone, including teachers, which prevents further arguments to be held online.

The Facebook group acted as a blank slate in which any student in the group could post anything they wanted on the “wall” of the group. Other students are also able to comment on a previous post, which acted as the ignition to most of the online arguments.

It appeared as though most freshman could only vaguely recall the arguments, rather than remembering exactly who said what.

“Stupid things, like people being annoying and calling others out. People were saying one kid was bullying other kids and people were fighting about that,” said freshman Julia Krapf.

Although most freshman decided to engage somehow in the fights, whether it be making their own comments or just reading the arguments, some freshman decided to have no part in any of it.

“I don’t like to look at them; I don’t get involved because they’re dumb and I don’t want to be a part of that,” freshman Emma Zent exclaimed.

Freshman Aaron Howe did not physically see the fights, but heard about them in school.

“I thought it was stupid that people were fighting on Facebook. People are afraid to argue with people face to face,” Howe said.

With Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking websites growing exponentially in popularity each day, the new generation of teenagers use these sites to state what they would rather not say in person.

“People can hide behind computers and say whatever they want,” stated Krapf.

With popularity in social networking comes popularity in cyberbulling. This newer form of disrespect is defined as any remark online that causes a person to feel tormented, harassed, humiliated, embarrassed or overall targeted by someone else. As of 2012, one in three students have reported that they have been cyberbulling, while just one in two students reported they have seen or heard of someone else being cyberbullied, according to bullyingstatistics.org

Arguements such as the ones on the Freshman Facebook page have displayed various forms of cyberbulling, with kids being targeted and directly insulted. Additionally, the class website has proven to be a better method for getting out announcements to the class than the Facebook group.

“I diffused the problem quickly,” Schofield said. “I put a stop to it, I think, because I haven’t heard of any trouble lately.”