School Bullying Council

“Safety and security don’t just happen, they are the result of collective consensus and public investment. We owe our children, the most vulnerable citizens in our society, a life free of violence and fear.”

– Nelson Mandela

Bullying has become a huge issue these days, both online and off. Not just for individuals, but also for families and communities. It’s a mentally, emotionally trying experience. With the release of the movie, Bully in theaters March 30, the spotlight is shining even brighter on the tragic consequences bullying can have.

The good news is, there are ways to find, prevent, and remove bullying from classrooms and computers (and workplaces and life). Many organizations, celebrities, and passionate people are focused on the issue. Lady Gaga recently launched her Born This Way Foundation, Ellen DeGeneres has been an outspoken advocate to #endbullying, supporting organizations like GLSEN, The Trevor Project, and The National Center for Bullying Prevention, and what once seemed like “someone else’s problem” is becoming much more visible to us all. And along with more mainstream visibility comes more compassion, as well as more solutions. Part of solving any problem is education.

Here are some alarming figures from anti-bullying nonprofit Community Matters:

• 25,000 students are targets of attacks, shakedowns, robberies in secondary schools every day (National School Safety Center)

• 46% of high school students report seeing a serious fight at least once a month at school (USA Today). Research shows that 1/3 of the brain shuts down for as much as 72 hours after seeing that type of violence

• 260 teachers are physically assaulted and 6250 teachers are threatened with bodily injury every day (National Education Association)

• Approximately 75% of students say they have been bullied at school (Centers for Disease Control Prevention)

• Every day, 160,000 students stay home from school due to fear of attack or intimidation (National Association of School Psychologists)

Although these statistics seem intimidating, concrete steps can be taken to protect your child. The first step is awareness. CNN has an article, “How to Spot a Bullied Child and What to Do,” that highlights a few signs you may see from a bullied child:

• Inexplicable fits of rage: Does your child blow up at the least provocation?

• Overreaction to normal, daily frustrations: Does your child overreact to people and situations that never would have bothered him or her before?

• Faking illness to avoid going to school, or even making themselves sick.

• Impaired immune system and frequent illness: The constant stress and sadness associated with severe bullying can weaken your child’s immune system. This, coupled with a child’s wishing he or she were sick to get out of school can be a powerful combination.

Image courtesy of Eddie-S (Flickr).

Here are a few things The National Bullying Prevention Center suggests you can do to help prevent bullying:

• Sign a Petition–Unite with others and add your voice to an online petition or hold a petition signing event at your school or in your community.

• Share Stories–Upload a video, story, poem, artwork, or audio clip expressing how you feel about bullying, how you think it affects students and schools, what you have done to prevent bullying, or what others can do to prevent bullying.

• National Bullying Prevention Month–Participate in activities, education and awareness building in October.

• Community Events–Hold a special event to show your school or organization cares about this important issue. The event can include music, giveaways, special speakers, petition signings and more, as people unite to join the movement against bullying.

• Run, Walk, Roll Against Bullying–Raise awareness of bullying prevention in your community with a live event. Find a location, gather sponsors, invite participants and hold the event. Consider planning activities for after the race, such as speakers, drawings and more.

• Donate–Donating to the cause is a great way to share you care. Your contribution can mean one less student being bullied, one more student speaking out, or one more student knowing that someone cares. 

And don’t forget to share your passion to help with your social networks. With more understanding and awareness of the problem, the chances of creating long-term change greatly increase. Like most things, the more we work together to listen, learn, and help, the faster things will get better. Because everyone deserves to feel and be safe and happy.

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The much-talked about documentary Bully hits select theaters on Friday. The film follows one year in the lives of bullied kids and their families.

I sat down with L.A. based psychologist Dr. Joel Liebowitz to talk about the issue. Liebowitz deals with children and teens and issues involving bullying, which he explains can carry long term effects on the victim akin to post-traumatic stress disorder. This obviously not only leaves lasting marks on the victim, but society as well.

Zorianna Kit: What makes this generation of bullies different?

Dr. Joel Liebowitz: I think ultimately there is no difference. The only addition to this generation is what we now call cyber bullying. There are electronic means of being anonymous and doing the same things that were done usually face to face. But I don’t think it’s any less or any more than it ever was.

ZK: Has the attitude towards bullying changed in our society?

JL: It’s beginning to change. When teachers and other administrators used to say, ‘Let the boys work it out; let the girls work it out,’ we know that is not realistic. Kids don’t have the tools very often to work it out, they don’t know how to deal with conflict resolution. In fact they don’t have the ability to do it. They need the administration. They need other professionals to teach them how. There has to be an attitude of zero tolerance so they all feel safe.

Schools — in many cases not enough — are beginning to understand there are liabilities that they didn’t appreciate before, both social and financial, if they do not address the issue.

ZK: Why didn’t this change happen sooner?

JL: I think the cultural attitude was such that kids will just work it out or ‘This stuff just happens, don’t make a big deal about it.’ So there was kind of a conspiracy of silence, not with intention to leave people at risk, but because it was just not recognized to have long lasting effects. Some kids who were bullied suffered loss of self-esteem and issues of relationship throughout their life as a result.

ZK: Do bullies know that they’re being bullies?

JL: The current thinking is that bullies mean to inflict emotional and physical pain. They expect the action to hurt and they take pleasure from the distress it causes. That is what we believe to be the case, typically. The bully is quite aware. It’s an imbalance of power. And the bullies understand that. Bullying also tends to be an ongoing event. It happens more than once and it happens over and over again. There’s a pattern.

ZK: Why does someone decide to bully?

JL: We used to think maybe they were kids with low self-esteem. But it’s not so. There are bullies that range from confident and sometimes popular kids who actually enjoy throwing their weight around and having a feeling of a sense of superiority over others. There are friendless loners who look for opportunities to bully when no one will stop them. There are all kinds of bullies. They don’t come in just one form.

ZK: Are we getting better as a society in handling this issue?

JL: I don’t think it’s getting worse. In fact, I think it’s much more clear to people that there is a real problem and it needs to be addressed. People are now becoming more conscious and more responsive in a way that they did not previously in other generations. It used to hide in the shadows but kids are becoming aware and bystanders are being more proactive. Administrations are being much more responsive. And while parents perhaps don’t always see or understand, I think they can be brought to an awareness through education, through intervention programs, and through media.

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It didn’t take long once Gurbaksh Chahal’s family emigrated from India to San Jose, Calif., for bullies to target him. “Kindergarten was my first reality check that I looked physically different,” Chahal says. Kids started trying to hit the turban off his head when he was 5, and the bullying intensified through middle school and high school. “It got more personal with name-calling and more threatening, violent,” he recalls. “As time went on, it got rougher and rougher. A 5-year-old bully is very different from a 15-year-old bully.”

With no friends to hang out with, Chahal had the spare time to work side jobs and make thousands of dollars buying low and selling high — he’d buy refurbished printers from a local flea market for $50 and sell them on eBay for up to $200. He used that money to capitalize a startup, ClickAgents, at age 16, sold that business for $40 million. Then he started his second business, an online advertising company, BlueLithium, which he sold to Yahoo for $300 million in 2007. His latest business, RadiumOne, is an advertising network harnessing social interaction data. Accomplishing all this before age 30, Chahal proves sometimes bullied kids do get the last laugh.

How did your grandmother help you cope with being bullied?

The bullying got progressively worse through middle school to the point I had to make a choice, which is that I probably was not going to make friends. So I looked to my grandmother for moral support. We had a very close relationship, and when I’d come home with my turban in hand, she would comfort me and tell me things will get better, that I’m a great son and a good person. Some of those things I just needed to hear from her — it would give me strength to go to school the next day.

I realized I’m different — so what? I can go ahead and focus on real things, such as what I wanted to do with my life. Not having the distractions in my life that a normal 16-year-old would allowed me to mature a lot quicker and fall in love with business.

So starting a business also helped you get more confident?

I was definitely an introvert. I wouldn’t be the type of guy who could go in front of the class and give a speech, per se. But now I love to have an audience. When you’re confident in something, you start to become an extrovert. Through my experience as an entrepreneur, I’m a very different person now than I was as a 16-year-old. You have choices to make — one is to give up and be an introvert and let it eat you alive, or the other is to be confident knowing that you’re put on this earth for a reason. Bullying just gives you the strength to figure out what that reason is earlier in life, and that’s the biggest gift I’ve had — to figure that out at 16.

That’s when you quit high school?

There was a method and timing to that. It’s not like I just decided to drop out of high school because I was getting picked on. I spent hours in the library and computer lab, researching the Internet, and was fascinated with what was going on with the dot-com boom. I forgot I was 16, and basically said I want to be part of it, so I started a business from my bedroom. When my company hit $100,000 in sales, I asked my parents if I could quit high school. Had I not had a successul business in three months, I would have been in high school, gone to college, all the normal stuff. But I put myself out there. When you’re passionate about something, you figure out ways to make it successful. I had more money at 18 than I could dream of.

Why do you think selling your second company to Yahoo for $300 million meant so much to your father?

For my father, it was a sense of achievement the second time around. With my first company, you could say it was just luck, but when I did it twice, and the second one became an even bigger entity, he realized his son had achieved something: the American dream.

Did your experiences getting bullied help you deal with challenges in business?

I’m a very different person than who I was as a kid. I have the courage to overcome a lot both professionally and personally. I would go through all those struggles again, because it makes you a stronger human being.

What would you say kids who are getting bullied now?

Accept the fact that you’re different, and use your strength to figure out who you’re going to be in this world. Being the prom king or queen — all that stuff just fades. The broader purpose is what you do with your life. People like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs did so well in life not because they were the rock stars in their school, but because they were very different. Being different is cool. Being different actually gives you a canvas on which you can paint who you are and what you want to be vs. trying to fit in and be something you’re not.

Entrepreneur Spotlight

Name: Gurbaksh Chahal
Company: RadiumOne
Age: 29
Location: San Francisco
Founded: 2009
Employees: 150
2012 Projected Revenue: Undisclosed
Website: www.radiumone.com

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