5 of 121 DOCUMENTS The Boston Globe January 30, 2007 Tuesday FIRST EDITION Thwarting the bullies in our schools BYLINE: Jack Levin - Jack Levin is a professor of sociology and criminology at Northeastern University. SECTION: OP-ED; Pg. A7 LENGTH: 699 words THE FATAL STABBING of a student at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School is obviously a tragic event; it is also an opportunity to examine the phenomenon of student-on-student violence. The essential problem with the public reaction to this horrific act of violence is that we can't seem to get past the details of this particular crime in this particular school as perpetrated by this particular student, when we should instead be focusing on the larger picture. Until we are able to get beyond our obsession with easy answers, such as suspect John Odgren's Asperger's disorder or the psychotropic medications he takes, we will learn little about how to prevent violence at school. The occurrence of a teen with Asperger's disorder who kills a schoolmate is so extraordinary that it may not happen again for generations. What will definitely occur time and again are episodes of school violence in which one youngster who has been teased, bullied, or humiliated kills another for revenge. Not revenge aimed at the student whose life he has taken, but at students in general. It is almost never a single event that inspires an act of extreme violence. Instead, the young killer has typically spent months, if not years, being terrorized. He may reach the point where even an innocuous gesture from an innocent classmate is misunderstood as a threatening response. Some students at Lincoln-Sudbury reported that Odgren had been teased for the way he dressed. But his parents suggested that he had been thoroughly miserable at his previous school, causing him to spend his evenings at home wrapped in a blanket and in tears. There is an important lesson here - bullying in the schools should be totally unacceptable to students, teachers, parents, and school administrators. Let us see bullying for what it is: not a normal part of growing up, but a potentially devastating series of events for any youngster who is different for a variety of reasons, including being overweight, a different race, having an accent, or a physical or mental disability. Intervention by an adult is the key. Rather than turning their backs on occurrences of bullying in the hallway, lunchroom, or playground, teachers, counselors, and school psychologists must intervene. The easy response is to do nothing; the effective reaction is to become sensitive to what happens between students outside the classroom and to put a stop to anyone who is harassing another person with words or fists. Many schools have adopted antibullying programs in which students are taught to empathize with the victims of bullying rather than contribute to their victimization. The second lesson to learn from the Lincoln-Sudbury tragedy is that we must break the culture of silence that so often exists among students in a middle or high school setting. In Boston, fear of physical retaliation has apparently caused many who witness violent criminal activities to ignore their responsibility to cooperate with police in identifying killers. But in middle-class suburbs, students who overhear a threat in the hallway fear the social consequences. Snitching is not viewed as being cool, and students do not want to be rejected by their peers. Youngsters who prefer not to be labeled as a snitch will talk themselves into believing that someone else is bound to inform so why should they get involved? The establishment of a tip hotline in Lincoln-Sudbury makes sense, but only if informing on schoolmates is positively sanctioned in the student culture. Across the country, there have been fewer school shootings committed by disgruntled students thanks in part to the willingness of youngsters to put aside their social anxieties and inform a parent, a teacher or a resource officer. In such communities as Marshfield and New Bedford, the culture of silence was reduced to the point where students cooperated with police to turn in threatening schoolmates before they carried out their murderous intentions. By reducing bullying and breaking the culture of silence, we will dramatically improve the quality of life not only for those students who are victims of violence but for all of our children. In the process, we may also prevent a slaying or two. LOAD-DATE: January 30, 2007 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company All Rights Reserved |