This summer, I took a break from my regular beats of food politics and integrative medicine to write about something I knew little about: bullying.
My piece (pg. 26 in the fall Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly) was spurred in part by the case of Phoebe Prince, a fifteen-year-old student who took her own life last January after being bullied mercilessly and repeatedly by classmates. (She attended South Hadley High, down the street from Mount Holyoke; the D.A. on the case is an MHC alumnae.) In the past month or so, additional bullying-related suicides, all of them anti-gay, have made national headlines: 18-year-old Tyler Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge after discovering his roommate had broadcast a video of him making out with a male classmate online. Billy Lucas, 15, of Indiana and Seth Walsh, 13, of California, both were victims of anti-gay bullying as was Asher Brown, 13, of Texas. All three committed suicide. To my mind, these qualify as hate crimes—and should be treated accordingly.
Though I didn't cover solutions to anti-gay bullying specifically, the basics of what I learned still apply: students need to be taught empathy and teachers (and parents) need to intervene when they witness bullying. Both of the top anti-bullying prevention programs employed at public schools across the U.S. focus on empathy building and teacher training: the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (named after pioneering bullying researcher Dan Olweus, whose initiatives were adopted by Norway in the early 80's to great success) and the Center for School Climate and Learning, which sends consultants into schools to absorb the school climate before recommending changes.
"I think of my work not as anti-bullying but as pro-social work," Christopher E. Overtree from the Center for School Climate and Learning told me. "We try to stimulate a positive social climate that makes bullying stand out as a negative behavior."
Instead of quick but ineffective fixes (such as teachers giving lectures on bullying), the Center for School Climate and Learning advocates more creative, holistic approaches. For instance, in one Tennessee school, Overtree suggested faculty and staff start a club where students could make hats for pediatric cancer patients. "It had a drastic change on the demeanor of the school," Overtree says. "Every student became engaged. Academically things improved, too."