"Even One Person Would Have Made A Difference" Youth Panelists Speak Out

Have you ever wondered about bullying? Earlier this fall, on October 20, there was a town hall meeting at WVIZ in Cleveland focusing on this subject. There was a live studio audience and a panel of students who had been bullied, plus Jill Rembrandt, the Associate Director of the Anti-Defamation League and Steve Dettelbach from the Ohio Defending Children Initiative. Lakewood Schools had been invited to participate. We (Liam and John, Harding Middle School 7th and 6th graders) were with three students from Lakewood High School, and our teacher, Mr. Spooner. Students from Garfield Middle School also attended.

The people introducing the panel explained that bullying is counter-productive and unacceptable, however, it has gotten worse in past years with expanding technology. Now bullying doesn’t stop when the school day ends. You can be bullied through comments and texts and once they are out there, they won’t go away (which is especially the case with the Internet).

There were four teenagers on the panel:

The first to be recognized was Alex, an openly gay teenager who had been teased and called names in school and tried to take his own life when he was a freshman. He is a winner of the Maltz Museum's "Stop the Hate" Youth Speak Out essay contest. He brought up the topic of the role that the bystander plays in bullying. He said it would have been nice and would have made a big difference, if just one person had stuck up for him. He pointed out that there are often bystanders who witness bullying but don’t do anything. He said that when you are being called a name or bullied in the middle of a group and no-one else comes to your defense and everyone watches, it makes it feel as if the person doing the bullying is speaking for everyone, and they all feel that way about you. Suddenly there are a lot of bullies.

Trey, a senior from Solon High School, was the second student that spoke. He had a history of being bullied, so he formed a group that travels to schools and inquires about bullying, saying things like, “What do you hear?” “What strategies do you use?” and advising students, “Look out for your peers” and especially, “Look out for those who don’t have peers, or friends.” Trey is a football player for his school and he made the point that bullying shouldn’t be acceptable from any group, even “jocks” and that it makes a big difference if you don’t tolerate bullying in any group that you are a part of. He described the difference he has been able to make with fellow football players, who in some cases went from being “jock” bullies to protectors of those who have been bullied.

The last of the students to be recognized were sisters, Allah and Sarah Mohammed. They said that at school they got called names like “terrorist,” because of their Arabic background and dress. Their method for dealing with this was to ask the name-caller questions like, “Why am I a terrorist?” and “What did I do that made you call me that?” They said that instead of bystanders just watching or joining in, they got caught up in the questions to see if the name-caller had anything else to say. They made the name-caller have to think and see them as individual people instead of stereotypes, and then there was nothing else to say. They don’t get called names much anymore, they said, but if they do, they are able to laugh it off.

An interesting topic that the panel brought up by a teacher who is the leader of the Unity Club at Valley Forge High School in Parma.  She made the point that most bullies have had their own bullies, earlier in their lives or at home and that bullying behavior is the behavior of a hurt person who has something wrong with him or her. You should always stand up for yourself or somebody else, to let everyone know that there is something wrong with bullying behavior. It is not about the victim having anything "wrong" with them. According to the panel, the number one reason why people don’t stand up for others is that they are afraid they will be the next target. Jill Rembrandt talked about changing this situation: She told  the story of how there had been someone sitting alone in the cafeteria, who was being picked on, and having food thrown at him, and then a whole table of people got up from where they were sitting to go sit with him. The idea presented was that the more people who refuse to tolerate being treated like this, and refuse to tolerate others being treated like this, the more other people will see it, and the less it will happen.

Then it was time for questions.

The questions were sent by email or text, and they also recognized students and teachers in the audience who wished to ask questions. One question that didn’t get answered in a very satisfactory way was, “What happens when you tell a teacher and the bullying doesn’t stop, or gets worse because the bully knows that a teacher has been told and it doesn’t make any difference, and the bully becomes more punishing, or bullies more people, including the person who reported it?”  The panelists implied that the teacher or the school HAS to do something, but you could tell that the student questioner was speaking from experience and had been left feeling unsupported. Another person asked, “What if you don’t want to be called a ‘snitch’?”  The answer was to report bullying anonymously or privately. This answer too seemed to leave the questioner feeling frustrated, causing listeners to wonder whether this strategy would work or not, especially since it seemed to contradict what was said earlier about standing up for the person being bullied at the time.

One thing that was clear is that there wasn’t enough time to answer all of the questions or go into the kind of details that might need to be gone into to figure out all of these situations.

There were two things we criticized about the town hall meeting when we discussed writing this article. One was that it would have been helpful to have a former bully on the panel to talk about why they did what they did, and two, they kept saying that bullying “isn’t just punching and fighting,” and spent a long time talking about Internet bullying, but never got around to addressing what to do if it is punching and fighting.

Overall, it was a good and informative meeting, and we were pleased to have been asked to go representing our school. We started talking about sharing what we had learned with other students and schools in Lakewood on our way home.

The panelists wanted to make sure that every participant could boil down their main points. Here they are: 1.) Don’t be a bully, which includes not being a bystander who does nothing or laughs or joins in. 2.) Report bullying when you see it. When it’s cyber-bullying, report it and save the text, comment, etc for evidence.

They had more important advice for both bullies and people getting bullied: If you are being bullied, you are not alone. It will get better if you talk to someone about it.

If you are teasing someone, or worse; take a second and think about what you’re doing.

Their main purpose seemed to be to spread the word that bullying was unacceptable and that there was nothing about it that was part of a normal school experience; that bullies are bullies not because “that’s how it is, some kids are tough” but because there is something wrong with them-- they have been hurt and spread hurt-- and it has to be stopped, inside the school, where there will be support. When you are at school, always remember to tell someone. They gave a website to learn more: stopbullying.gov.

If you have experience with bullying and stories about how you, your friends, parents or teachers handled it, please share them so students, teachers and families can get more ideas about what works.

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