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Warren councilman leads charge in effort to crack down on bullies
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Bob Dean, Warren city councilman at-large and council president-elect, tells an audience that school administrators and elected officials must ensure that bullying doesn’t interfere with any student’s education and ambitions. The town-hall meeting was Sunday at First Unitarian Church in Youngstown.
YOUNGSTOWN
School administrators and elected officials must fulfill their responsibility to make sure that bullying doesn’t interfere with any student’s education and ambitions, a Warren city councilman told an anti-bullying town hall meeting.
“We’ve invested in you, and we’re not going to let something as silly and as stupid as bullying interfere with where you’re going in the future, and that’s our promise to you,” said Bob Dean, D-at large, and Warren council president-elect.
Dean was addressing his remarks to bullying victims, including a victim of one of the recent assaults that was reported at Warren’s Willard K-8 School and members of that victim’s family, who were in the audience.
The victim in attendance was a victim of “organized bullying,” having been beaten by four students in a school locker room, Dean said. “Now, it’s a village that has to take care of this problem,” Dean added.
Dean spoke to about three dozen people at the Sunday meeting in First Unitarian Church on Youngstown’s North Side. The meeting was sponsored by a group calling itself Citizens Against Bigotry and Prejudice.
“We’re going to take care of you. You may be on your way to law school, and none of this silliness is going to stop you. You may be on your way to the Pentagon, and none of this stuff is going to stop you,” Dean told the Warren victim.
“A school superintendent is responsible for hundreds of kids. Does he have time for one child? He sure better,” if the child is a bullying victim, Dean said.
The consequences of bullying for its victims can range from academic under-performance and social withdrawal to suicide, the councilman said.
A major 21st Century concern is cyber-bullying, which Dean described as psychological “bullying with no fingerprints.”
Cyber-bullying “spreads like wildfire. They never know who, where or how much, or where it’s coming from,” Dean said of its victims.
To address bullying in a broader context, State Sen. Joe Schiavoni, D-33rd, of Canfield, said he is sponsoring Senate Bill 127, which would authorize school administrators to discipline students for bullying that occurs off the school premises.
“If it substantially impairs a student’s ability to learn, then they would be able to give detention and do suspensions for perpetrators of bullying,” said Schiavoni, who attended the meeting and said his bill has bipartisan support.
“This would include cyber-bullying because that’s a growing problem,” Schiavoni said of the bill.
“It’s a work in progress. I proposed the bill so that we can get feedback from schools, police and parents and have everybody kind of work together on the issue,” the state senator said.
Schiavoni said he hopes his bill can be reconciled with a similar anti-bullying bill in the Ohio House of Representatives and passed next year.