School Bullying Council

UPDATE: The principal of Bedford Middle School in Westport has emailed students’ families to alert them about the YouTube video posted by one of the school’s eighth-grade students in which the girl says she has been a target of bullying and issues a plea for it to stop.

Following is the text of the email sent Friday by Principal Melissa Kay:

“Dear Parents,

We are investigating a recent case of cyber bullying. Today, the school counseling staff and I met with the 8th graders in their teams to remind them of internet safety and consequences of cyber bullying. We encourage parents to have similar discussions at home with your children.

Attached is the link to the Internet Safety Workshop recently held at SHS (Staples High School).

There is valuable information specific to cyber bullying in this link.

http://teachers.westport.k12.ct.us/internetsafety/

Thank you for your immediate attention to this.”

HERE’S WHAT SCHOOL OFFICIALS WERE REACTING TO, as reported Friday afternoon on http://www.westport-news.com:

A 13-year-old girl — an eighth-grade student at Bedford Middle School in Westport — has posted a video on the YouTube website pleading for an end to the bullying that she says she has suffered.

The girl, who identifies herself only as “Alye,” is bathed in an eerie orange light in the nearly three-minute video she has titled, “Words are Worse than Sticks and Stones.” It was posted March 14 on the popular video website.

The name on YouTube account is “alyepollack,” and a source confirmed the girl’s name is Alye Pollack.

The girl does not speak in the video, but instead holds up a series of hand-lettered signs stating things like: “I am bullied. Not a day has gone by with one of these words …” and the next sign lists a series of insults and epithets, including, “… Fat, Slut, Freak, Ugly …”

Another signs says, “I don’t have many friends. 3? 4?” She also indicates that she has been sad “since 6th grade.”

Another sign reads, “I am in therapy/guidance more than in my classes” and another states: “I like my school just not the kids” and another, “Will high school get worse???????”

One of the last signs she holds before the camera reads: “HELP” in large capital letters, followed by, “THINK before you say things. IT MIGHT SAVE …” “LIVES,” reads the following sign.

The video had attracted 67 comments posted on YouTube as of Friday afternoon (by midday Saturday, there were nearly 190 comments on the YouTune video), including several that make specific references to Westport.

One comment reads, in part: “Alye, I really think it will be better for you in high school at Staples, I have 3 kids who have gone through and they found it to be a much more liberal and welcoming place than middle school. Middle school is never easy, stay strong and I hope and pray things get better for you.”

And another: “Hi Alye — I was bullied relentlessly for three years at Staples. I can totally understand and relate to how you feel. I am so sorry you have to endure this but trust me, those people who are saying all those hateful things are not worth it. They are all painfully insecure and bullying together makes them feel better. If you ever want to talk, please don’t hesitate to message me! You are not alone!”

The issue of bullying is in the spotlight in Connecticut as new anti-bullying legislation is on its way to the state Senate floor after it was unanimously approved Wednesday by the General Assembly’s Education Committee.

The proposal would require school districts to include online harassment of students, also known as “cyberbullying,” in their anti-bullying policies.

The bill also calls for all school employees to receive training to prevent, identify and respond to bullying.

Under other provisions of the bill, school employees would have to report bullying to the school’s principal or safe school specialist within one school day of learning about or witnessing an incident. The principal or specialist would then have to investigate the issue within 10 days.

http://www.westport-news.com/news/article/School-officials-react-to-video-plea-against-1306773.php

I wonder if anyone at NBC Entertainment watches any of the shows on NBC News or vice-versa. If so, Sunday night might be an epiphanous moment for network television, a cognitive flash of self-awareness that could jolt American culture in the direction of human decency.

Well, yes, I do understand I’m talking about the same network that aired “Fear Factor,” “The Weakest Link” and “My Mother The Car.” But it could happen. It could.

OK, OK, it probably won’t. But dreaming is cheap. And the contrast between Sunday’s episode of “Dateline NBC” about bullies and the reality-competition show that follows it is so dramatic that even a segment of the population as intellectually vacuous and emotionally retarded as network programmers ought to get it.

“America’s Next Great Restaurant” might have been a mildly interesting entry in the reality field. Four chefs and restaurateurs judge the proposals and performance of 21 contestants seeking funding to open a small fast-food chain. Some of the ideas, admittedly, range from loony to disturbing: A combination gun store and cafe? A place featuring “lactation smoothies”? A Hooters for the opposite sex called Peckers?

Others, however, are intriguing. I’d love to visit a joint featuring tacos with fillings like jalapeno crabcake or an all-pot pie place with flavors like Philly cheese steak. And listening to the judges chat about potential marketing or cooking problems with the contestants is pretty interesting. Would a restaurant with nothing but grilled-cheese sandwiches on the menu be able to turn out the product on a fast-food timetable? Have enough Americans sworn off meat to make a vegetarian fast-food chain worth a try?

But “America’s Next Great Restaurant” is quickly undone by the same mean-spiritedness that makes “Survivor,” “American Idol” and the rest of this genre such an unpleasant viewing experience. Winning depends at least as much (and probably much more) on impressing the producers with television skills as it does on winning over the judges with culinary expertise or business savvy. So taunting and back-biting among the contestants is a dreary constant.

And the judges, whatever their restaurant acumen, are out-and-out louts, smirking and ridiculing their way through the shows like the cross-bred bastards of Gordon Ramsay and Donald Trump. One is Miami’s Lorena Garcia, who maintains South Florida’s near-perfect record of contributing nothing to national television, but she’s far from the worst. That would surely be the Brit chef Curtis Stone, whose surly abuse of contestants is all the more untoward for his utter ignorance of American cuisine. How did a guy who’s never heard of banana cream pie manage to get a job as a judge on a show like this?

The answer is supplied in the hour before “America’s Next Great Restaurant” airs. “Bullies love an audience,” declares one of the experts interviewed by “Dateline NBC’s” Kate Snow for a disquieting but perhaps hopeful episode titled “My Kid Would Never Bully.”

Though it includes some insightful conversations with such people as Rosalind Wiseman (whose book “Queen Bees and Wannabes” was the basis for the film “Mean Girls”), this report is much more than a compendium of talking heads. Its most compelling moments make use of hidden cameras to record the reactions of teenagers when they observe other kids being bullied. Unknown to them, the bullies and their victims are unpaid actors. Another thing they don’t know: Their own mothers are watching on video monitors in another room.

In some ways, the results are heartening. Almost all the unsuspecting kids react against the bullies when they start mocking a skinny, unathletic boy as a “queerbag” or trashing an overweight girl for wearing horizontal stripes. Some try to distract the bullies; others are openly confrontational. It quickly becomes apparent that if just one kid will speak out against the bullies, others will back him up.

But there are also moments of desperation so disturbing that they’re almost impossible to watch. One girl slips quietly away to a corner of the room, where a hidden microphone picks up her tearful whisper: “It’s so hard.” It turns out she’s been the victim of bullies at her own school. After last year’s furor over the suicide of a gay college freshman tormented by his dormmates, thinking of bullying as a subset of homophobia has become common. But as “Dateline” makes clear, bullying is neither new nor necessarily related to sexual orientation: Kids for years have been victimized for walking, talking, dressing or doing almost anything else differently than the rest of the crowd.

Still, I wonder if a hidden-camera show done at my high school or junior high 40 years ago would have revealed as many kids willing to stick up for the weak or the out of step. My favorite was a girl named Lilly, who argues fiercely with the bullies and finally unleashes an F-bomb. “Nice language, daughter,” gasps her blushing but proud mother in the room down the hall.

If only we could slip Lilly onto “America’s Next Great Restaurant.”

DATELINE NBC: MY KID WOULD NEVER BULLY

7-8 p.m. EST Sunday

AMERICA’S NEXT GREAT RESTAURANT

8-9 p.m. EST Sunday

NBC

Glenn Garvin: ggarvin@MiamiHerald.com

http://www.kansascity.com/2011/03/04/2698515/what-high-schools-and-restaurant.html