Have you ever been bullied? Stockwell on the Hub

Have you ever been bullied?

For the past several weeks there has been an ugly situation brewing at the high school.  It seems a student has “alleged a culture of bullying on the boys’ basketball team and further alleged retaliation by the coaching staff against those who report bullying incidents.”

This situation, if true, is especially troubling since it involves the very adults who are supposed to be preventing this kind of thing.  

To complicate things even more one of the high school assistant principals was quoted as explaining that the situation was not bullying per se.  Rather, he described it as an example “poor behavior.”

Is there a massive cover up going on here?  The fact is we don’t know yet.  The issue is before the board of education and given what I’ve seen thus far from that group, I am confident they will get to the bottom of it. 

In the mean time all of this raises an interesting question.  What exactly is “bullying”? 

According to the dictionary a bully is a person who uses strength or power to harm or intimidate those who are weaker.

I searched the Newtown School District website as well as that of several specific schools in Newtown and I couldn’t find the district policy or a definition.  I know there is a policy that is essentially “zero tolerance”—at least theoretically.

The problem is how do you separate bullying from the “poor behavior” or the kind of teasing you would expect from kids? 

For me one huge factor is the frequency of the events.  To illustrate this let me describe my recollections of my own days in junior high and high school.  There were times when I’d be passing in the halls and a bigger boy would “accidentally” bump into me shoving me against a row of lockers.  It didn’t happen often and there was no further interaction.  I never thought of it as bullying.  I just happened to be the available victim of some kid trying to impress his friends.

Now here’s another situation.  When I was about 9 or 10 years old after school every day I would ride my bicycle to a large pasture down the road from my house.  I’d meet up with a bunch of other kids who also rode their bikes from near and far and we’d play baseball.  Just before dark we’d jump on our bikes to ride home for dinner.  On my way home there lived down a long dirt driveway an older boy who loved to hide in the woods until I was just about to pass him at which time he’d jump out, knock me off my bicycle and torment me for a while.  This happened pretty much every day until it got too cold to ride to the fields for our baseball games. 

By the time a new year rolled around the kid had mercifully gotten bored with the game and moved on to bigger and better things. 

Now THAT is bullying. But in those days there was no policy and pretty much no sympathy from adults.  It was simply a part of growing up.  Your only option was to ride it out or like Ralphie in “A Christmas Story”, call the bully’s bluff and go berserk on him. 

I am not suggesting we should return to that time and turn a blind eye to bullying.  Being bullied is not fun. And when you factor in newer developments such as cyber bullying and social networking it takes on a whole new meaning. It is absolutely a form of abuse and in many cases assault.  It must be stopped and dealt with. 

In my humble opinion if it turns out that a person or people on the high school staff were in fact complicit in the bullying of one or more students, they should be dismissed.   Zero tolerance.