They were bullied by students at school to the point they thought they couldn’t escape it.
Twenty-eight percent of the more than 7 million students surveyed nationally said they experienced bullying in their school, according to a 2010 report from the U.S. Department of Education.
Most experts interviewed by the Middletown Journal said they believe bullying is on the rise, largely, if not exclusively, due to the influence of text messaging and social media.
Local school officials said they understand the issue and have created schoolwide programs to deal with it. But they’re also quick to point out bullying has been made easier with advances in technology, and it often goes beyond the school doors.
Last week, the Ohio Senate passed House Bill 166, known as “The Jessica Logan Act,” in honor of a Cincinnati teenager who committed suicide when a sexually explicit photo of her was spread around her school via text messaging. The bill awaits Gov. John Kasich’s signature to become law.
The bill gives schools greater power to investigate and punish students for incidents of cyber-bullying, and also requires schools to develop anti-cyberbullying programs that would include a discussion of the consequences of cyber-bullying.
The Department of Education report indicates that 6 percent of the 7 million students reported being victims of cyberbullying.
“The difference is that before social media, when school was out, kids went home and most of them didn’t see each other again until the next morning,” said Tim Carr, Hamilton schools’ director of student services.
“Now, they’re connected 24 hours a day, and Facebook accounts for about a third of the bullying reports we get.”
“If you can (bully) without seeing the pain in another person’s eyes, it’s a lot easier to be a bully,” said Shakila Ahmed, coordinator of the anti-bullying program Bullies and Victims at the Cincinnati Islamic Center.
“It’s much easier to spread the rumors when you don’t have to face the person directly. Obviously, it takes bullying to a different level. Kids have to understand that there has to be consequences, and someone will be made to set an example, unfortunately.”
Becoming a leader
When she was in elementary school, Niki Bowman was admittedly a little chubby, and with her thick red hair, she became the subject of taunts and verbal abuse from her peers, who called her “pumpkin head” and “a lot of other names fifth- and sixth-grade girls shouldn’t be saying.”
By the time she got to middle school, it had gotten so bad that her tormentors would call her in the middle of the night, tell her that nobody loved her, not even her parents.
“I wanted to kill myself multiple times,” she said, just so the taunting would stop. “I would lay awake at night thinking about cutting my wrists or hanging myself, all the different ways I could kill myself because no one cared about me.”
Things eventually got better, but it never stopped. She found a best friend that she could talk to, who advised her to tell her mother, which led to getting some professional help. Playing volleyball helped work out some of her aggression.
And she also became a leader in her school. During her sophomore year, she was tapped to participate in the J. Kyle Braid Leadership Ranch in Colorado, where she was given some of the tools she needed to be a force for change in her community.
Hamilton’s anti-bullying program, which was piloted at select elementary schools last school year and is being presented to each one in the district this year, uses games, multimedia and small group “family” discussions, according to Chrissy Hutzelman, Hamilton City Schools’ character education coordinator.
There’s not one, simple, fool-proof way to prevent or halt bullying situations, and what works in one situation may not work in another, Carr said.
“It’s important for the bullied to confront the bully because the majority of (the) time they started out as friends and became friends again after the issue was resolved,” Carr said.
Bowman’s favorite confrontational method: Kill them with kindness. That is, when she would see one of her tormentors approach, she would compliment her on her hair or outfit or something else.
“It’ll freak them out,” she said, “because I bring them up before they can bring me down.”
However, Brenten Baker, an 11-year-old in the Hamilton school district, said confronting students who were bullying him didn’t work.
“I was really worried about having a meeting with the kids,” Baker said. “The principal told me that this was the best way to handle this type of situation. The kids did apologize, and the principal explained to them that this behavior will not be tolerated. The principal did not tell any of my teachers, school staff or parents. Basically, she set me up. Things only got worse for me after the meeting, and I did not feel safe or comfortable at school anymore.”
Finally, his parents moved him to a different elementary school in the district, and Brenten was no longer a victim.
Positive support
The Middletown City School District implemented a program this year called Positive Behavior Supports in which every teacher is involved helping students.
High school Principal Carmela Cotter said this program has been a key factor in promoting a healthier environment for students, noting that there was a 50 percent decline in violence at the high school from the first semester this year compared with the first semester last year.
“There’s a heightened awareness to bullying now,” Cotter said. “I don’t think we have a big problem with it, and a lot of it is due to changing our climate. The entire district has bought into this program.”
Anti-bullying videos were produced last year that featured five different areas where problems can occur, such as hallways and the cafeteria, and teachers have been assigned a specific zone in the building that they “own.”
“Teachers can teach what the behavior expectations are in those areas,” Cotter said. “Students wouldn’t know if someone wasn’t telling them. If you don’t learn them, you don’t know how to behave. We’re being proactive.”
The program encourages students to communicate with the staff if there is a problem with bullying, which is stated in the policy as “intentional written, verbal or physical acts that a student has exhibited toward another particular student more than once. ... And the behavior causes both mental or physical harm to the other student and is sufficiently severe, persistent or pervasive that it creates an intimidating, threatening or abusive educational environment for the other student.”
“Whenever you have that kind of behavior, it can really have a negative impact on your entire household,” Cotter said.
“It’s no different in a school. As a result, we took a look at those things, and we really needed to start with the high school. Students feel comfortable and supported. We want what’s best for them.”
Parental involvement
Hutzelman arranged for representatives of Cincinnati Bell and the Butler County Prosecutors Office to come to the district’s middle schools to discuss the legal ramifications of cyber-bullying and “sexting,” the practice of transmitting sexually explicit photos via text messaging.
Even with greater legal authority to act on instances of cyber-bullying, however, the schools cannot monitor the behavior of its students all the time, and administrators say they’ve been having difficulty getting parents involved.
Hamilton parent Adrienne Wright expressed her frustration with trying to get local parents involved in anti-bullying efforts. She said her daughter has been bullied regularly for three years to the point that she was recommended for suspension for fighting back, and the girls doing the bullying didn’t limit their aggression to school.
Wright said she wants to work with the school, but wants other parents whose children have been bullied to step forward with her. Wright created a Facebook group: Help Stop Bullying in Hamilton City Schools.
But since October, it has attracted only 49 members, and they have not contributed much.
By contrast, a Facebook page called Hamilton’s Negatives, which uses as its profile photo a sign saying “Trash Only,” set up specifically to let students post ugly and hurtful things about their peers, has attracted 189 “friends” since it was set up in August last year.
The stakes in the battle against bullying are high. To say that it’s a matter of life and death is no exaggeration.
The parents of a 9-year-old student in the Talawanda district contacted the Middletown Journal because their son has been in psychiatric care since November after he confessed to suicidal thoughts after being bullied from the beginning of the school year on the playground.
He told his caregivers that he once climbed a tree in the family’s back yard so that he could jump off and break his legs so that he wouldn’t have to go to school anymore. Fortunately, the branches started breaking and he couldn’t get high enough in the tree.
CourtneyLyn Bacher, the Ross High School senior who recently made the news by posting a tearful video on Facebook and YouTube describing her ordeal and her suicidal thoughts, confessed to having cut herself and burned herself with cigarettes as a way of coping with bullying.
Bullying also causes a significant distraction in the school environment.
“The bottom line for educators if their kids don’t feel safe coming to school, the school cannot achieve its academic potential,” Ahmed said.
“A school that has a lot of bullying will find it reflected in their test scores, and the teachers spending time, energy and resources on discipline issues that should be spent on academic issues.”
The main thing, educators and experts say, is that students being bullied and students who witness bullying need to step forward and say something to a trusted adult.
“We can have all the policies and procedures in place, but if we’re not notified, it’s for nothing,” said Rick Pate, assistant principal at Ross High School, after Bacher’s story came to light.
“They have to tell someone. It doesn’t matter if it’s a cafeteria worker or a custodian, it doesn’t make any difference to me, just so that they tell an adult so we can intervene.”
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