William Allen High School students investigated after filming bullying of students

At least two William Allen High School students are under investigation for possible criminal charges due to a video of themselves bullying and hitting other kids on school grounds.

It's a video they recorded themselves and posted onto Facebook, with the students narrating wholesale usa jerseys into the camera and laughing at the kids as they taunt and threaten them.

"I feel bad about sending my kids to Allen if that's the kind of environment," said Allentown School Board member David Zimmerman, whose son is one of the students being bullied.

"I'm saying as a parent: Why do kids have to go to a school in this environment, where this is accepted as normal course?" Zimmerman said. Thursday, Zimmerman said. The video shows two students bullying three boys sitting at a cafeteria table as they play cards and attempt to ignore the other students.

One of the students smacks a boy across the back of the head, then takes another's phone and starts using it, Zimmerman said. Another stands directly over a boy's head and grabs strands of his hair.

The students say multiple obscenities to the boys throughout the roughly three minute video, at one point calling one a slang term for homosexual.

Zimmerman said there were no faculty members or staff monitoring the students at the time. A security guard passes the students at the beginning of the video but does not intervene.

"See security, look, security on the watch, but they don't give a (expletive) still," one of the students said after the guard passes. "(Expletives) still about to get mopped," a slang term meaning "beat up."

No response from district

District officials declined to comment on whether they are seeking disciplinary measures against the students or whether they are reviewing their student monitoring procedures.

"The Allentown School District is following protocol regarding this issue," spokeswoman Kimberly Golden Benner said. "We do not discuss individual student disciplinary action nor comment on personnel issues."

Allentown police Capt. Tony Alsleben said a criminal investigation is ongoing but he could not provide further details because the parties are juveniles. Zimmerman said he notified police and supplied them with a copy of the video.

Efforts to contact the students who recorded the video were unsuccessful. The video has since been removed from the Facebook page of one of the students.

Zimmerman said the district needs to provide better monitoring of students and take steps to change the culture of the high school or this type of behavior will continue.

"I'm not saying it's all students. It's probably a minority of students, but the district has to do something about it," he said. "It's like it's being ignored, ignored, ignored. Nobody wants to address the issue, so it just perpetuates itself."

Role of social media

Zimmerman noted that social media played a role in the bullying, as the video appears to have been recorded specifically to be shared online.

"They think it helps them build street cred, like 'I'm a tough guy,'" Zimmerman said. "The kid's trying to build a persona and put it out there publicly, and this is just part of it. That's his motivation."

Julie Hertzog, director of the National Bullying Prevention Center, said a positive impact of social media is that it leaves electronic evidence that the bullying occurred.

"A lot of times, bullying is very discrete or out of the purview of adults or teachers, but the interesting thing about technology is it leaves a trail," she said. "It's no longer hearsay. It's historical evidence."