School Bullying Council

A comuter keyboard is seen – File / Photo: Ami Vitale/Getty Images

Reporting Fran Schneidau

HARTFORD, CT (WCBS 880) - Connecticut’s top law enforcement official wants to crack down on cyber bullying.

WCBS 880 Connecticut Bureau Chief Fran Schneidau with State Attorney General George Jepsen

Right now, if a bully who targets kids on the internet is caught, he or she would likely be charged with a misdemeanor – breach of peace or, perhaps, harassment.

In Connecticut, Attorney General George Jepsen is pushing a bill that would make cyber bullying a criminal matter – a felony. He says would-be bullies need to know the consequences.

“They need to change their behavior. They’ll be better people for it,” Jepsen told WCBS 880 Connecticut Bureau Chief Fran Schneidau. “We need to change our culture and send a message that bullying isn’t just part of growing up. It’s something that’s wrong and we’re not going to tolerate it.”

In cyber bullying, the instigator is rarely caught.

“You have the anonymity of being on the internet. So nobody knows exactly where this is coming from,” says Stamford‘s youth officer Sgt. Joe Kennedy, who believes that upgrading the law will heighten awareness.

“It’s also to send a message to the parents that if you have kids that participate in this type of activity, that they are going to be charged with it,” says Kennedy.

He notes just last week a list of names of dozens of school girls locally was posted on the internet singling them out as promiscuous.

Jepsen says there is a strong movement toward passage of the bill.

Do you think there should be tougher cyber bullying laws? Sound off below

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/03/21/connecticut-attorney-general-pushes-to-criminalize-cyber-bullying/

President Obama and the first lady spoke out against bullying Thursday, urging parents, schools and community leaders to look for ways to address a problem that they say has gotten worse in the age of the internet and social networking.

Joined at the White House Conference of Bullying Prevention by top advisers, cabinet officials and about 150 parents, teachers and school administrators, Obama said that bullying, which effects about 13 million children annually by one estimate, is behavior that doesn’t have to happen.

“If there’s one goal of this conference, it’s to dispel the myth that bullying is just a harmless rite of passage or an inevitable part of growing up.  It’s not,” said Obama, who acknowledged that he was bullied when he was younger. 

“As adults, we all remember what it was like to see kids picked on in the hallways or in the schoolyard.  And I have to say, with big ears and the name that I have, I wasn’t immune,” he said. “I didn’t emerge unscathed.  But because it’s something that happens a lot, and it’s something that’s always been around, sometimes we’ve turned a blind eye to the problem.  We’ve said, ‘Kids will be kids.’  And so sometimes we overlook the real damage that bullying can do, especially when young people face harassment day after day, week after week.

First lady Michelle Obama said, “This issue really hits home for us” as parents.

“It breaks our hearts to think that any child feels afraid every day in the classroom, on the playground, or even online,” she said.

The first lady said that she knows how hard it is to figure out what is going on at school. When she asks her younger daughter, Sasha, what happened at school, she said, her response is always the same: Nothing.

“As parents we know we need to make an effort to know what’s going on in our kids lives,” she said. “We something is wrong, we need to speak up.”

The White House has launched a Web site, stopbullying.gov, as a clearinghouse for information on prevention. And the Department of Education is working with schools to implement guidelines for dealing with the problem. Additionally, the nation’s two largest teacher unions will launch prevention campaigns.

The focus on bullying followsrecent new reports that several young people committed suicide after being bullied. Last fall, the president, Vice President Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton taped messages as part of the “It Gets Better” campaign, a public awareness effort aimed at gay youth.

The White House conference will include break-out sessions led by senior administration officials. It wraps up at 2 p.m.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/44/post/obama-speaks-out-against-bullying-says-i-wasnt-immune/2011/03/10/ABTfMDQ_blog.html

President Obama ‘fessed up Thursday morning that, as a young student, he was involved in bullying. As a victim, that is.

“I have to say, with big ears and the name that I have, I wasn’t immune.  I didn’t emerge unscathed,” he told teachers, parents and government officials assembled for the White House Conference on Bullying Prevention.

The president showed off several anti-bullying efforts under way in Washington, including the new website stopbullying.gov and initiatives by the Department of Education to get anti-bullying programs up and running in schools.  (In a nod to the growing menace of cyber-bullying, Facebook joined in too, announcing new social networking tools to help victims report when they’ve been attacked.)

Obama stressed that kids, parents and schools shouldn’t approach bullying as business as usual. “Because it’s something that happens a lot, and it’s something that’s always been around, sometimes we’ve turned a blind eye to the problem.  We’ve said ‘Kids will be kids.’ And so sometimes we overlook the real damage that bullying can do,” he said.

Calling attention to bullies’ bad behavior might be the first step in getting them knock it off, experts say.  In February the Los Angeles Times reported about recent research conducted in high schools in North Carolina that showed that students behaved more aggressively toward other kids as their popularity increased. (Some noted that this seemed a lot like the behavior of the social climbers in Hollywood movies like “Mean Girls.”)  UCLA psychologist Jaana Juvonen told The Times, “It’s really critical for bystanders to speak up. If there’s an aggressive kid everyone bows down to, it sends a signal to the bully that what they’re doing is working.” 

Students at Trevor G. Browne High School in Phoenix, Ariz., wrote to The Times about the study.  Like Obama and Juvonen, many agreed it was time to draw the line on bullies. Here’s a sampling of their comments:

Josue: “My solution … against bullying [is to] involve the teachers in this fight against aggression. If the student disobeys this rule, their consequence will be one of the following: warning, detention, call to parents, referral and even suspension.”

Ellie: “You have to do better than fight and pick on others to succeed in life.  We all know high school isn’t easy because of bullying, but kids need to be informed on why it’s not OK.”

Steven: “Teens don’t really bully to gain social status, they do it more for their entertainment.  There are some people that think if they bully someone it will make them seem cool or known, but it’s really not the case. Those who are getting bullied need to be smart enough to avoid it or let someone know what you’re going through to prevent it from happening again.”

Claudia: “As a teenager, I’ve noticed that both in high school and in middle school people will do almost anything in order to be at the top of the popularity chain.  What teenagers in school need to do is simply tell a trusted adult about their problems.  Schools should be more aware and open about letting their students know more about bullying.  We need to get back to the old times where the popular people were those whom everyone wanted to be around because they were friendly and outgoing and not because we feared them.”

RELATED:
 
Story about the White House Conference on Bullying Prevention

Times article on recent research about aggression and popularity

More from The Times on bullying.

White House backgrounder on Thursday’s bullying conference.

http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-heb-obama-bullying-conference-20110310,0,1882157.story?track=rss