The mother of a Florida college student killed in a hazing ritual urged the audience at a Maine Township anti-hazing forum never to forget incidents of hazing and bullying in their community.
“The moment you forget is the moment it reoccurs,” said Pam Champion, the Georgia mom whose son Robert died in 2011 after being beaten during a hazing ritual on a Florida A&M band charter bus.
Bullying, according to new data, is down among US middle school students, despite an increase in media reports coving the subject. In fact, violence has dropped nearly 75 percent in the last two decades.
Do people ever consider the possibility that, if they’re exposed to increased reports about a social problem, it’s the reporting that has increased rather than the problem? It’s increasingly clear that this is the case with school bullying: Only news reports about it have increased, not the behavior itself. In fact, both bullying and fear of it are down among US middle school students (the grade levels that tends to experience bullying most), Education Week reports, citing new numbers from the National Center for Educational Statistics.
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This is data reflecting both physical and verbal aggression. For all students in grades 6-12, “hate-related graffiti” in school classrooms, bathrooms, hallways, etc. “dropped from about 36% in 1999 to about 28% in 2011. The rate of students who reported fearing an attack or harm at school at all has also dropped dramatically, from nearly 12% in 1995 to less than 4% in 2011. For black and Hispanic students, it’s an even more encouraging shift—from more than 20% of both groups of students worried about being attacked at school to less than 5% in 2011 [the latest figures available].”
WASHINGTON — Students are getting a new weapon to fight back against bullies: their cell phones.
A leading education technology company on Wednesday announced it would give schools a free and confidential way for students to tell school officials via text that they are being bullied or are witnessing bullying. Blackboard’s TipTxt program could change the school climate — or reveal just how pervasive student-on-student harassment has become.
“Kids have cell phones. They have mobile devices,” said Blackboard chief executive officer Jay Bhatt, whose 9-year-old daughter is already sending digital messages to her friends. “They’re constantly interacting with their mobile devices.”
Blackboard, which provides products to more than half of the nation’s schools, will offer the service for free starting immediately. Texts sent through the confidential program will be routed to school officials, who then will determine how to investigate.
“Things always came (by) word of mouth or in the line coming back from the playground. That whisper down the lane has always occurred,” said Thomas Murray, a former principal who now is director of technology and cyber education at Quakertown Community School District in suburban Allentown, Pa. “We want students to do what’s right. This is another avenue we can tap into.”
Murray said his schools were no worse than most with bullying, but decided to be among the first to employ the Blackboard system.
Faggot. Queer. Girl.
That’s what Will Baublit says classmates called him every day in the fifth grade.
They tripped him in the hallway, knocked his books out of his hands, threatened to bust his head open. At a football game, a group beat him up.
The year before, the classmates had been his friends. They’d known one another since the first grade at East Knox Middle School in rural Knox County northeast of Columbus. But in fifth grade, Will revealed that he was gay, and everything changed.
After repeated requests to school administrators to stop the bullying, the family sued the district in federal court. Though the district denied the claims, the lawsuit was settled in the family’s favor.
A teenager who was allegedly subjected to years of bullying is now suing the Hunterdon Central Board of Education and Flemington-Raritan Board of Education.
The suit, filed in late February in Superior Court in Flemington by attorney Brian Cige, claims the now-teenager was bullied not only by other children but by some school employees as well, from fourth grade onward.
The boy and his parents — as well as the students who did the bullying — are identified only by initials in the suit, which makes the following claims:
The bullying started in the fourth grade and continued into high school.
The years of alleged taunting, name calling and derogatory comments took its toll — as the young man eventually developed serious and debilitating health issues. He missed significant periods of school for hospitalization, according to the suit. Although the direct bullying has subsided, the suit claims the high school district is now doing very little to accommodate his disability.
The suit details many incidents over an eight-year period starting in grade school in the Flemington-Raritan district and continuing into high school at Hunterdon Central.
The reasons for the boy being targeted changed over the years. He was first picked on because of his physique, then later because of his hair, and then his perceived sexual orientation. He was subject to name calling, “pantsing” (having his pants pulled down to expose his underwear), being poked and having kick balls hurled at him until he was doubled over in pain, the suit said. Later, the boy was subjected to cyber bullying via Facebook, the suit said.
Bullying can threaten students’ physical and emotional safety at school and can negatively impact their ability to learn. The best way to address bullying is to stop it before it starts. There are a number of things school staff can do to make schools safer and prevent bullying.
Assess school prevention and intervention efforts around student behavior, including substance use and violence. You may be able to build upon them or integrate bullying prevention strategies. Many programs help address the same protective and risk factors that bullying programs do.
Conduct assessments in your school to determine how often bullying occurs, where it happens, how students and adults intervene, and whether your prevention efforts are working.
It is important for everyone in the community to work together to send a unified message against bullying. Launch an awareness campaign to make the objectives known to the school, parents, and community members. Establish a school safety committee or task force to plan, implement, and evaluate your school’s bullying prevention program.
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