JUDL Debaters at the Street Car Debates NEWARK, NJ - The 2nd college debate of the Street Car Debate series was held on March 30, 2011 at the Student Center of the Rutgers Newark campus. An audience of almost 100 students listened as the affirmative team of Elijah Smith and Babatunde Odubekun supported the resolution that we should criminalize cyberbullying. On the negative side, Carlos Astacio and Zach McCloud advocated not extending current laws to specifically cover cyberbullying. The debate was moderated by Dr. Elizabeth Sloan-Power, Assistant Professor at the School of Social Work.

The debate lasted over 30 minuets, with each side presenting two constructive speeches, a question and answer period for each speaker, and one final summation speech for each side. The moderator Dr. Sloan-Power also participated in providing questions for the speakers.

The affirmative side supported having new laws that would govern cyberbullying for various compelling reasons. Among these, the affirmative side stated that "the school day ends at 3pm, cyberbullying is 24/7." They also put forth that "laws are not just for punishments, they are for deterrence," and that the most equitable way to handle these situations was to pursue redress through both criminal and civil laws. They cited texting and driving laws that were created to specifically address new phenomena, where people were driving recklessly because they were sending text messages while they were driving.

The negative advocated "holding [people] accountable by pursuing people through civil laws". They cited the case of Phoebe Prince, who committed suicide after suffering months of bullying from school classmates. The accused were tried under Massachusetts anti-bullying laws that were specifically passed as a result of this incident. These laws covered bullying, not cyberbullying per se. They also suggested that additional laws could "complicate our courts."

Both sides discussed the tragic incident of the suicide of Tyler Celmenti, a Rutgers freshman student who committed suicide after his roommate broadcast live images on the internet of the 18-year-old having a sexual encounter with another man. This was cited as an example of cyberbullying and the disturbing trend of harassing classmates through electronic media, particularly bullying due to sexual orientation.

At the end of the debate, several audience members asked questions of both sides of the panel, with such questions as having the panel elaborate more on specific cases cited as well as giving additional viewpoints or discussing points of view not covered in the debate.

Several members of Cleveland Elementary School were also in attendance and participated in asking questions, illustrating that this issue is something that concerns even the primary grade students.

Marcia Brown, Assistant Provost at Rutgers University, proudly stated that the Rutgers debate team was "putting Rutgers Newark on the map" due to their good debate record during the school year. Rutgers will be featuring the debate in a video news story on their campus newspaper's website, the Observer.