Stopit! Isn’t Effective at East
When I was in middle school, the district began promoting “STOPit!”, an application designed for students to submit anonymous reports to the administration and guidance of bullying, hazing and other damaging actions within the school community. The application’s anonymity aims to prevent any possible backlash a student would receive for reporting a fellow student. “StopIt!” sounds like a great tool with positive intentions on paper. At Cherry Hill High School East, however, it’s something entirely different: a joke.
“It’s kind of a joke,” Mason Rosenbaum (‘24) said.
Mason told Eastside that after STOPit!’s implementation into our community, people joked that they were going to report others on the application. Such jokes ironically defeated its purpose of anonymity.
Yet while STOPit! is no longer joked about as much, it is still not taken seriously. At Cherry Hill High School East, STOPit! has become largely irrelevant.
“I’ve never really used it,” said Aaron Cheng (‘25).
Just like Cheng, many East students have never used STOPit!. Moreover, when you talk to East students about STOPit!, most of the responses seem similar. They remember discussions about the application, though have never utilized it. In general, most people are unaware that STOPit! is still a district-endorsed service.
Crowdsourcing applications like STOPit! depend on heavy community engagement. In other words, its usefulness is severely limited if it does not have a large user base to file reports. The school is actively attempting to increase STOPit! usage by promoting it in their daily emails sent to students.
Even with an increase in users, however, STOPit! may still be an ineffective tool to curb bad behavior at East. The system is rife with the possibility of abuse, because anonymous reporting, the app’s main draw, is a double-edged sword. It ensures the safety of the person reporting, but it hurts the credibility of the information. Without the guarantee of credible information, there is no point in having it in the first place. It is also much different than an anonymous tip line a city may set up for its police departments. With a tip line, any possible information is important to receive and respond to immediately.
There are reasons some believe STOPit! is effective, nevertheless. For example, it can be intimidating for some students to visit a teacher or administrator regarding a school problem. STOPit! thus provides students with a way to easily communicate with school staff, allowing them to intervene in situations quickly and in a more effective way.
“It’s [also] kind of effective because you can report anyone you want… It’s useful [in that way],” said Deron Chen (‘26).
Unfortunately, the downsides of STOPit! ultimately overpower the positive impacts it could have. The tool is primarily ineffective in its mission of curbing inappropriate behavior within the school. While some students have had positive experiences using STOPit!, there could be more effective tools for the school to implement. Ask yourself this: how effective can an app that is not respected by students, not widely used, and permissive of false information be?