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Bystanders rarely step in with bullies
By Robert guttersohn
A 14-year-old student at Boardman’s Glenwood Middle School had her lunch knocked to the floor, hair tugged and her hair spat on.
“I don’t know how I got through it all these years,” she said.
The harassment went on from grades six through eight and had witnesses – the other students.
“They don’t do a thing,” said the student, whose parents requested she not be identified. “They just watch it happen. They think it’s a show to watch.”
She is moving on to high school in the fall, but before leaving Glenwood, she delivered a three-page speech to her class.
“We are supposed to be making a difference in this world, but only some actually are,” she wrote. “Some students do not get it through [their] thick skulls that we are all here to learn, and to get a job in the future, not to manipulate someone else.”
The student was relieved to let emotions out after three years of harassment but was still disappointed at the number of other students that did the same.
“Out of the whole eighth-grade, out of those 160-something eighth-graders, only two actually stepped up,” she said.
Superintendent Frank Lazzeri has said that Boardman schools do address bullying in a variety of ways. He has said the school resource officer and guidance counselors address the topic with students, and teachers and a parent-community engagement committee meets to discuss ways to prevent bullying. The school also is developing a program to specifically address cyber-bullying.
Student bystanders or silent supporters of bullying is an issue receiving more attention from guidance counselors and social workers, according to Karen Slovak, an Ohio University professor of social work.
“They really need to be held accountable,” Slovak said. “If you see a crime happen, you’re an accomplice.”
Slovak said there are two reasons students shy away from preventing or reporting bullying. First is a sense of relief when they aren’t the one picked on.
“They feel they may have the next bull’s-eye on their back if they say anything,” Slovak said.
Second, when it comes to bullying – or more particularly, cyberbullying – students believe their school will not effectively resolve the situation and reporting may result in more of their own Internet privileges being taken away.
“That’s thing with Internet today, it’s not safe anymore,” the 14-year old student said. She recalled an incident when another student wanted to post on You Tube a picture of her holding a torn school-owned dodgeball, an incident a bully tried blaming on her. The photo was prevented from going up only because her father called the student’s family.
Students aren’t the only ones that feel schools are ineffective at preventing cyberbullying.
Slovak surveyed school social workers in the Midwest. She published the results in the Journal of the National Association of Social Workers. Slovak found that only 32.9 percent of them said their school had a cyberbullying policy, and only two-thirds of them called the policy effective.
“Technology has created a new type of bullying,” said Cindy Maynard, a guidance counselor at South Range Local Schools. “It’s a 24/7 bullying.”
Students who do not report incidents “are on the side of the bully,” she said.
Three years ago, Maynard formed a sisterhood of students at the high school where South Range seniors mentored the incoming freshmen. Within this group, the female students formed a bond and were less afraid to come out and report bullying.
“It takes courage to stand up and say something,” she said.