The Bully Effect
A year ago this month, a 10-year-old boarded a school bus with a loaded gun in his backpack. He brought the weapon to protect himself from two students who had threatened him the previous day. Last October, the mother of a 15-year-old who killed a 16-year-old claimed her son had been bullied by a group of boys that included the shooting victim. At the beginning of December, a third-grader’s mother stormed into a classroom and demanded that her son beat up a student who allegedly bullied him. And, just last month, a high school senior with a 3.9 GPA hanged herself. Both her family and youth pastor attribute the suicide to relentless bullying.
These local stories and others have parents, educators and civic leaders wondering whether the cyber-assisted national uptick in bullying cases has engulfed Baton Rouge.
Nationwide, a spate of teen suicides attributed to relentless bullying has caught the attention of both celebrities and the press. Following the suicide of a 14-year-old fan in New York, Lady Gaga announced her aim to make bullying illegal. During a weeklong series on the topic, Anderson Cooper released a CNN study that showed high-school students were engaged in a perpetually brutal verbal, emotional, physical and cyber-based battle to get to the top of the tteen social hierarchy.
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Many local students report interactions with the school’s “popular” crowd offer the greatest potential for abuse. “Most kids [choose] their friends with because they have common interests,” explains sophomore Carrie Ingerman, a Baton Rougean who now attends a Massachusetts boarding school. “But, with the popular crowd, people are doing it for the status. So, bullying does come up more within the popular crowd than with others.”
As a board-certified child and adolescent psychiatrist with more than 25 years of experience, Dr. Joseph A. Grizzaffi says, “From what I have seen in my practice [in working with] children from all different schools and socio-economic levels, it happens everywhere.”
In 2010, the Caring Communities Youth Survey polled 113,000 Louisiana students and found that 9.8% of sixth-graders admitted to being bullied at least once in the past year. The percentage declined steadily to 4.3% among high-school seniors surveyed. But when students were asked if they had missed school because they feel unsafe en route to or on campus, 23.1% of sixth-graders said they had done so at least once in the past month. Nearly 9% of seniors said the same.
Since the survey began in 2006, the numbers haven’t changed much. That does not surprise Gwynn Shamlin, a professional with I CARE, East Baton Rouge Parish’s taxpayer-funded provider of school-based prevention education.
“Bullying has always existed,” he says. “What’s changed is how kids respond to it and deal with it. We had Columbine and other school shootings and suicides that are suspected to be connected to [bullying]. That’s why there’s so much awareness [and education] now.”
The carnage of Denver’s 1999 Columbine High School shootings and recent bullying-related suicides demonstrate that at times, demoralized victims can cause as much devastation or more than the bullies themselves to families, schools and communities. Now, behavior that was once marginalized as schoolyard squabbles appears a credible threat to children’s welfare and survival.
“Bullying needs to be taken seriously when it occurs,” says I CARE Director Becky Young. “It has gotten to be a very popular [word]. But we have to be careful not to define all behaviors surrounding conflict as bullying.”
I CARE has developed a simple, concise definition: Bullying is a repeated, intentional, hurtful behavior that takes advantage of a power imbalance.
“You can have two kids who have a difference of opinion or a conflict. If they are equal in their standings, or if it’s a one-time only event, that’s not really bullying,” Shamlin says. “Bullying occurs when there is repeated name-calling, shoving or extortion. And one party has to have an advantage over the other—whether it be physical, emotional or social.”
As for parents themselves fighting back, Louisiana’s bullies have met their match in Brandy Wise.
Wise is a 40-year-old mother of four who has never shied away from a challenge. But in the spring of 2010, she felt as though she was losing the battle for her daughter’s life.
Shortly after beginning Denham Springs Junior High, 13-year-old Rachel Wise told an infatuated female classmate that a boy liked another girl. In retaliation, all three sixth-graders harassed Rachel, and they attempted to recruit the entire student body to join in the abuse. For nearly a year, Wise met with school officials to seek a resolution to her daughter’s suffering, but no disciplinary action was taken.
Soon, doctors diagnosed Rachel with gastroenteritis. Every day, the sixth-grader tearfully begged her mother not to make her go to school and called home complaining of severe stomach pain.
Rachel believed exposing the situation would only increase the abuse, so she never gave her mother or medical professionals any indication the two problems were related. Then one morning, Rachel’s older sister asked their mother to look at something on the computer.
“I was horrified,” Wise recalls. “It was a MySpace hate blog. There was a picture of [Rachel] with a red slash through her face. I couldn’t believe the things these kids were saying about her. This was at the time that children all over the United States were hanging themselves for being bullied. I was terrified that Rachel was going to do something like that. Her grades were suffering. Emotionally and physically she was suffering. I didn’t want to walk in my daughter’s room one day and find that she committed suicide.”
Wise secured a transfer for Rachel to another school and found counseling to help her daughter heal. She approached school officials and the police with documentation. Despite the evidence, the parish employees explained there was simply nothing they could do. Cyber bullying was not against the law.
“I was so angry,” Wise says. “But then I got proactive. And that did more for me than my anger did.”
Wise called the media and emailed every elected state official to implore them to author anti-cyber bullying legislation. She found an ally in Rep. Roy Burrell, D-Shreveport. With testimony from Wise, Burrell’s House Bill 1249 was approved by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Jindal in June 2010.
Now, convicted bullies aged 17 and older face a $500 fine and up to six months in jail. Younger offenders must undergo counseling.
Two years after her fight began, Wise is gratified that local schools have adopted a zero tolerance for cyber bullying. The policy is enforced both by administrators and on-duty officers.
“Rachel’s better, and I feel confident that if it ever happens again to us, I can do something about it,” Wise says. “Other parents need to be more proactive. I haven’t seen anybody else stand up like I did. But I know it’s going on with these kids. I’ve seen it on Facebook.”
The chairman of the House Education Committee, Rep. Austin Badon (D-New Orleans), plans during this year’s legislative session to resurrect an anti-bullying bill that was defeated by just 10 votes last year. The measure primarily expands the definition of social groups that should be protected from bullying, harassment and intimidation.
“It’s the kind of bill that is long overdue,” Badon says. “We are here to protect our students. This bill provides a heightened sensitivity about that for principals, teachers, bus drivers and other adults who need to protect students’ rights as part of their moral and professional responsibilities.”
Unfortunately, Rachel Wise’s story is not unique.
225 spoke to several students at McKinley High School who shared their personal experiences.
“The internet brought [bullying] to the front,” says senior Isis Francis. “One person will take the picture. Then it will be on the internet. Then somebody will see it, and they’ll re-tweet it, or they will re-post it. Everybody can see it, instead of it just being within your social group.”
Cyber-savvy teenagers might understand the risks of being online, but younger children are more vulnerable.
“If a young child has any kind of social media account, the parent needs to have access to it,” Young says. “They need to read it every single day. They are going to be shocked at what they see.”
Whether students are meaner to each other online or offline is debatable, but web-based bullying is changing the pace at which bullies and victims interact. With the constant chatter of tweeting and multimedia messaging, this morning’s insults can be yesterday’s news by lunch.
As state officials deal with bullying at the legislative level, students, parents and counselors in Baton Rouge remain in the trenches battling a cycle that continuously renews.
McKinley senior Trey Colar became a victim in third grade. “I was actually nice,” Colar says with a laugh. “I would treat people with respect the way my mom taught me to, and people took that for granted, and they used that against me.”
By the time he reached middle school, the constant abuse had taken its toll. “I turned into a kind of rough kid, trying to release anger,” Colar says. “I was mad a lot of times because of what happened back then.”
Colar began to hang out with the same students who had bullied him. Not only did he and the group belittle other boys, they were able literally to hit their targets under the guise of spontaneous slap-boxing matches in the boys’ bathroom.
At McKinley High, Colar says, “I learned not to bully people. I learned to help people who were being bullied by building their self-esteem up. And that’s what helped me. Being bullied made me a better person. You have to go through obstacles in life in order to get somewhere.”
Before Clayton R. Cook left LSU’s faculty last summer to become an assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Washington, he completed a two-year analysis of 153 bullying studies generated over 30 years.
Cook estimates 15% to 30% of minors are either bullies or victims. His research identified traits that reliably predict which children are likely to become both bullies and targets of bullies. Both types of children suffer from an array of deeper-rooted mental-health issues that range from anxiety and depression to uncontrolled rage.
Cook wants schools to adopt a social emotional learning (SEL) curriculum that teaches “skills like how to manage their emotions, demonstrate empathy, care and concern for the well-being of others, and to consider how behaviors now can positively or negatively impact them later on.”
Many school board officials, principals and teachers balk at ceding core curriculum time to social skills development—until they review the data. A study published by the Journal of Child Development suggests SEL results in an average 14% increase in academic testing. “Academic performance is intimately connected with a child’s social-emotional functioning, and that’s what we hope to promote,” Cook says.
I CARE implemented SEL programs in 2005 to help local schools and students cope with the changes and challenges brought by Hurricane Katrina. I CARE provides crisis response and counseling as well as violence, alcohol, tobacco and drug prevention to 81 public schools, 38 private schools and five alternative schools in East Baton Rouge Parish.
Like Colar, many bullies and their victims move beyond those roles and consider the experience a rite of passage into adulthood.
Unfortunately, the potential for bullying extends far beyond the schoolhouse doors. “It happens everywhere—in the workplace, in the military,” says Cook. “When any group of humans interacts over time, bully dynamics can form, because power hierarchies develop and someone exploits power over someone else.”
Sometimes, the behavior originates at home. “Parents can bully their kids,” says McKinley senior Chauncey Dominique. “It can really affect a person in the long run. So kids got to be strong. It’s life. You get bullied; you get talked about; you get picked on. It just depends on how you react to it.”
While it’s important for societies to send a clear message that bullying behavior will not be tolerated, many young people and educators alike believe it’s also important for individuals—both adults and children—to develop coping skills and a sense of resilience.
Most teens say drug and alcohol abuse is a greater concern than bullying. “They are all connected [because they involve] self-esteem,” says McKinley junior Paige Hudson. “If a person is getting bullied, they can turn to alcohol or drugs or something else, and it could make their life worse.”
Norma Rutledge could not agree more.
The former I CARE director and current executive director of the Baton Rouge Crisis Center believes bullying, substance abuse, domestic abuse and similar crises begin from a single spark: a particular person’s inability to control his or her own life, combined with a willingness to cede control to someone or something else.
Only after a crisis and with counseling do some adults develop coping skills to overcome obstacles.
“It’s a graduate-level course in growing up,” she says. “It takes family, culture and school to teach that valuable lesson. It is an art. You have to model it, and you have to give people a lot of opportunity to practice it.”
Rutledge encourages parents and educators to begin preparing children early. “People say, ‘Let’s make the world safe for children.’ I think you have to make children safe for the world,” she says thoughtfully. “Throughout their lives, they will have to dance to a lot of different music and preserve [a sense of self] with all the chaos that is going on around them.”
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