Bullying

There has been much written about bullying in the last month. How LGBT kids have been committing suicide, but bullying is not just a LGBT issue, it effects all students. Tall students, short students, fat students, it effects all students who are different from the other students. In Mississippi, it was bedause of the students name.

Girl Beaten for Having "Boy's Name"
by Dana Rudolph
November 12, 2010

What's in a name? A 12-year-old girl at Hernando Middle School in Mississippi was beaten by five fellow students -- reportedly because they said her name, Randi, was "a boy name."

"They started talking about me like I was a man," she told local news station WREG. "That I shouldn't be in this world. And my name was a boy name." The four girls and a boy surrounded her after a Fellowship of Christian Students meeting, and, she said, kicked her in the rib and leg, hit her in the face, sat on her, pushed her face into the floor, and threw her onto a cafeteria table.

Apparently, the incident was caught on surveillance camera, but in order to maintain student privacy, the film has not been released. A school administrator issued a statement, said WREG, that "fighting is not tolerated and that disciplinary action will be taken to the fullest extent of the law." No charges were filed, however, because the police were not called. Whether the attack was an isolated incident or part of ongoing bullying remains unknown.

Like many other school bullying incidents school officials either look the other way or try to minimize the incident. This was clearly an assault, but the school minimized the attack to a “disciplinary action” instead of criminal assault.

The only way we are going to stop bullying is bring about a change in culture, not just school culture but a societal change. We must all work together to bring about that change. We need the community, parents, school administrators, teachers and students all standing together and saying we will not tolerate bullying. That anti-bullying initiatives cannot just start at high school or in the middle schools, but must start in kindergarten with age appropriate training. Having anti-bullying policies does not stop bullying, schools that have the worst bullying are schools that do not enforce their policies. There are numerous studies that show that bullying can be stopped if we all work together.

This is what I mean when I say the culture has to change at the top…

Board: Teacher discipline is administrative matter
By Jason Carmel Davis
DAILY PRESS & ARGUS
November 9, 2010

A number of people from various Michigan communities with thoughts on the disciplining of Howell High School teacher Jay McDowell got those thoughts out during Monday's Board of Education meeting.

Several people from various teachers' unions, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups and areas such as Ann Arbor, Lansing and Saline spoke on behalf of McDowell, urging the board to rescind the disciplinary action the district handed out after McDowell on Oct. 20 got into a heated exchange with two students about gay rights. More than 100 people attended the meeting.
[…]
Ann Arbor resident Graeme Taylor, who is gay, told the story of how fear of bullying led him to a suicide attempt at 9 years old. He talked about how he wished he had someone to stick up for him the way some believe McDowell did for gay students in Howell.
[…]
Students and staff in the district were taking part in a national Spirit Day on Oct. 20 — a Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation event aimed to raise awareness of anti-gay bullying after the recent suicides of six gay teens across the United States. Students in support of the day wore purple T-shirts that read "Tyler's Army," for one of the six who died. Others wore shirts featuring a rainbow, which signifies gay pride. Not all students were required to participate.

A student, 16-year-old junior Daniel Glowacki, was then ejected from McDowell's economics class, along with another student, after Glowacki and McDowell argued about another student wearing a belt buckle featuring the Confederate flag. The district said McDowell deviated from curriculum, disregarded school policy in relation to suspension and violated a student's First Amendment rights in the incident.

District officials stated students' First Amendment rights were violated when McDowell directed the student to remove the belt buckle the teacher found offensive. That led to McDowell being suspended one day without pay.

So was this a First Amendment rights issue or was it a bullying issue? The article does not go into enough detail to make the judgment. However, if there were gay slurs used in the arguing between the students, then I agree with the student being ejected from the classroom. I trend to think the argument was over LGBT issues because it was during the Spirit Day.

This is the video of Graeme Taylor telling his story…