Students Taking a Responsible Stance

Students Taking A Responsible Stance As Affiliated with “Stop Bullying Now”

Often teenagers, in a pursuit to find themselves, have a tendency to alienate and to bully those they deem “different.” Bullying is the act of intentionally causing harm to others, through verbal harassment, physical assault, or other more subtle methods of coercion. Types of Bullying include:

1. Physical bullying includes any physical contact that would hurt or injure a person like hitting, kicking, punching, etc. Taking something that belongs to someone else and destroying it would also be considered a type of physical bullying. For example, if someone was walking down the street and someone came up to them and shoved them to the ground that would be physical bullying. In elementary and middle schools, 30.5% of all bullying is physical.

2. Verbal bullying is name-calling, making offensive remarks, or joking about a person's religion, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or the way they look. For example, if there was a group of kids who made fun of another kid because he couldn't run as fast as everyone else, it would be an example of verbal bullying. 46.5% of all bullying in schools is the verbal type. Verbal aggression is when a bully teases someone. It can also include a bully making verbal threats of violence or aggression against someone's personal property.

3. Indirect bullying includes spreading rumors or stories about someone, telling others about something that was told to you in private, and excluding others from groups. An example would be if you started a rumor that a boy in your class likes playing with dolls, and if the reason that you made up the story was because you thought it was funny. This would be indirect bullying. Indirect bullying accounts for 18.5% of all bullying.

4. Social alienation is when a bully excludes someone from a group on purpose. It also includes a bully spreading rumors, and also making fun of someone by pointing out their differences.

5. Intimidation is when a bully threatens someone else and frightens that person enough to make him or her do what the bully wants.

6. Cyber bullying is done by sending messages, pictures, or information using electronic media, computers (email & instant messages), or cell phones (text messaging & voicemail). For instance, if you sent a picture of a snake in an email to a person because you know that they are afraid of snakes that would be an example of cyber bullying. According to a survey done in 2003 only 4% of bullying is listed as "other types" and this would include cyber bullying. Even though this number seems small, the growth of this type of bullying is going up fast because of the spread of technology around the world. Bullying is unacceptable in our school system. Disciplining these students is not enough in order to deter them from attempting to boost their own self esteem at the expense of other students. Students Taking A Responsible Stance or S.T.A.R.S. is a program developed in conjunction with “Stop Bullying Now” to identify students who continue to bully their peers*. Our goal is to raise awareness of the severity of bullying as well as to identify what bullying is while learning effective strategies to stop bullying.

Why are bullying prevention programs so important? The U.S Department of Justice estimates that every day 160,000 students miss school because they feared being hurt by bullies. Children who are bullied are more likely than other children to be depressed, lonely, have low self esteem and contemplate suicide. Bullying creates a climate of fear and disrespect in schools and has a negative impact on student learning. The U.S. Secret Service found that 71% of school attackers were bullied prior to the attack.

High School Bullying Program Eligibility for the program is determined at the conclusion of the investigation of the reported incident. The investigation is comprised of these steps: 1. Administrator receives a completed incident report form. 2. Investigation is completed within 3 working days. 3. Parents notified at conclusion of investigation. 4. If bullying occurred, offender will be disciplined according to the BSD Code of Student Conduct, will complete the S.T.A.R.S. program, and receive intervention from the counseling department. 5. The victim will receive intervention from the counseling department.

Below is a brief outline of the requirements and expectations of the S.T.A.R.S. program.

Each offender will develop a document that contains the following pieces of information: . A description of the student’s bullying incident. . How their actions affected the victim(s) of the bullying. . What the student could have done differently to avoid bullying. . What has been learned from the student’s experience. . How will the student change his/her behavior.

*Some components of the STARS are based on the Bullying at School, Dan Olweus; Bully-Proofing your School, Carla Garrity, et al.; Set straight on Bullies, John Hoover; and Character University: Bully