Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — Establishing laws to address cyber bullying was one of the more than 10 questions asked of candidates during the second gubernatorial forum hosted by the American Samoa Bar Association on Wednesday night, Oct. 7, at the American Samoa Community College Multipurpose Center.

Questions for the forum were submitted by the public and vetted by the Bar Association. The forum’s moderator, Bar Association president Lornalei Meredith, randomly picked a question from the box of questions, and then read it to the candidates.

At last month’s forum, candidates received the questions — which came from Bar Association members — in advance. But for the second forum none of the candidates received the questions in advance. However, each team was given broad topics to prepare for.

The questions were presented in both English and Samoan as well as being displayed on two large screens at the event-venue for both the candidates and those in the audience.

The gubernatorial team of Gaoteote and Fai’ivae was unable to attend due to a prior commitment.

The 2nd ASBA forum was live streamed via Facebook, live broadcast on Bluesky Moana TV, as well as hosted live at the multipurpose center.

QUESTION

“Do you believe that American Samoa needs laws to address cyber bullying? If so, what should those laws include?” was the one of the questions, and was first directed to the Nua and Satele team.

NUA & SATELE

Candidate for lieutenant governor, Tapumanaia Galu Satele Jr., responded that cyber bullying is one of those “prevailing” issues right now among young people. He pointed out that the internet is the “main new medium of our time” for communication and processing information.

“And when we have issues such as cyber bullying, one of the hardest things to do, and most countries have found, is trying to [impose] regulations on how the internet is being used,” he said, and suggested having a “commission that is going to be the oversight or who is going to have to monitor how the information is going out.”

“One of the things that we were looking at, and are concerned about, is —  if the Department of Education issues iPads and laptops to all our students across the board, we want to make sure to see that all these devices have some sort of firewall that is going to protect the students from cyber bullying.”

“And the only way we can do that is have a commission that is going to be able to put together, a policy on how it’s used and how it can be regulated for people to use it,” he said.

He said American Samoa has seen a lot of issues and “right now we’re going through the issue of suicide with our young people. And what’s so hard about that, a lot of them are using the internet to relay how they’re feeling emotionally.”

“And if you look at the responses of people, it’s really tough, to see how a person is reaching out and then are getting comments that are very cruel and not good,” he pointed out.

To address cyber bullying, the Nua and Satele team believe that “we have to have a commission that can put together policy and regulations,” he said. “We have to make sure that if we’re going to provide electronic devices to our students, that we have firewalls that protect them, and we have to have some kind of regulation or laws that impacts directly someone who uses the internet to bully someone else.”

“So the Nua and Satele team believe regulations need to be created,” he added.

LEMANU & TALAUEGA

Candidate for lieutenant governor Talauega Eleasalo Va’alele Ale responded “yes” to creating laws to address cyber bullying.

“How do we do it? We can incorporate it into the criminal code, to statutorily create the crime of cyber bullying,” he explained and noted that, like all laws — we need to take time to understand the scope of this new liability or crime that we are establishing and making sure it addresses the evil that we want to stop. And that is, people who get on the internet and threaten the lives of other people.”

“We should look into ways to criminalize the behavior and to make sure that the penalty stops this type of behavior from happening in American Samoa,” he added.

I’AULUALO AND TAPAAU

Speaking on behalf of candidate for governor I’aulualo Fa’afetai Talia, candidate for lieutenant governor, Tapaau Dr. Daniel Mageo Aga responded, “absolutely yes. American Samoa needs laws to address cyber bullying, to take action to prevent cyber bullying and to protect our youth and school children.”

And those laws “should include definitions of bullying, defining characteristics that are commonly targeted for bullying behaviors and detail requirements for school district policies,” he continued. “That’s the kind of content that we should have in our law.”

“We believe that the time is now to start working on these laws because people are getting hurt by cyber bullying right now. Young people are getting harmed by cyber bullying right now,” he pointed out.

“And “when you see cyber bullying, you can actually make a difference by intervening. If you see someone getting bullied, you can step in and say ‘no, you’re not supposed to do that’,” he said.

He also shared with the audience — in the ASCC multipurpose center as well as those watching via cable TV and live streaming — that “I’aulualo and I have zero-tolerance for anyone in our camp who engages in cyber bullying.”

“We would call [on] all candidates to do the same. If the candidate sees any of their supporters engaged in cyber bullying against people from the other camps, that should not be tolerated,” he suggested.

I’aulualo said he and Tapaau attended a few weeks ago a seminar on cyber bullying hosted by ASCC student-body.

He then pointed out that a “major problem that we have now with our kids [is] on suicide.”

There was a question dealing with suicide that was asked towards the end of the more than 2-hour forum and Samoa News will report on it in future editions, along with other questions asked at the forum.