BY NICK BOOSE AND SAM SCHREPFERMAN, Editors
Senior Andrew Harper knows the feeling of being scared everyday. For his middle school career the only good were when the big group of bullies weren’t in school. During those years .Harper was in the Batavia school district. Each day he had bullying to look forward to.
“It wasn’t often that they were absent, considering they were in sports,” said Harper.
Harper was bullied constantly. He says his days were either a day of small amounts of bullying or very severe cases.
“An okay or good day consisted of verbal let downs. Like calling me weak, pathetic, telling me that I’m a nobody, or a loser,” said Harper.
Some of the okay days even consisted of physical harm to. He was pushed and locked into lockers. One day, the group of bullies locked him a locker for more than two hours. For Harper, physical harm was either an okay day of bullying or an awful day.
“I remember the worst day very clearly. It actually started off being somewhat fine. During our lunch period, two guys jumped me, they folded me up and put me in a trash can. I was facing my head to the top of the garbage can and my feet were right in front of my face. The boys took the trash can and rolled it down a flight of stairs. Once I got to a landing they rolled me down another flight,” said Harper.
Harper came out of that with a sprained ankle, sprained wrist, gashes on the head and leg and a busted lip. The school staff found out only when Harper limped into the nurses office bloody and dazed. Harper had hit his breaking point. There was no way to fix the damage that had been done.
It was later that day Harper was in terrible emotional shape. He sat in a chair with a rope in hand. A beam above his head. A Bible in his lap. He thought to himself that if God has a plan for him, he should show it now. Harper opened the Bible to a page and read the passage:
“God puts you through trials. He puts you in them with trust that and faith that you will overcome them.” Harper closed the Bible and put the rope and chair away. The thought of suicide has never crossed his mind again.
In this case, the bullies were given their punishments. One of the boys was given a detention and the other was suspended for five days. There is no doubt that bullying happens in any school in any school district. How you handle it is what counts.
Constant research has been done on the topic of bullying. According to a NIHS News Release a total of 10.6 percent of students said that they had been bullied. A total of 8.5 percent said they were targets of moderate bullying. A total of 8.4 percent said they were bullied frequently.
About 30 percent of students have been bullied on school grounds alone, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
In the Kaneland School District, this situation would have been handled much differently than it was.
The focus here is on prevention and intervention according to superintendent Jeff Schuler. At Kaneland, there are certain steps to be taken with each bullying incident. The main focus is showing the bully what they have done and how it has affected the other students around them. This is meant to prevent bullying in he long run.
In the new bullying policy, bullying is broken down into three levels. Each level is based on the severity of the act. Based on the action the bully is not only given a consequence, but they are put through forms of intervention.
Harper says that intervention is a good idea, on paper. Talking to a student about what they have done wrong won’t do anything. They have to have some kind of life changing experience, in his opinion.
Intervention is the second stage of the effort to rid bullying. Preventing a situation plays a key role to bullying. Principal Chip Hickman says part of the prevention is establishing culture. Establishing culture will raise awareness within the students.
According to Schuler, reporting is a standing issue within the kaneland schools. However kids are taught from a young age that telling on people is bad. To fix this, Hickman wants to link the community and parents to establish the culture of trust and reporting incidents.
A big part of raising awareness in students is reporting issues that happen. At Kaneland Harter Middle School, there is a tip line that students and parents are able to text and call to report an incident. Hickman expressed interest in setting up a ghost e-mail for reporting in the high school.
“I want a culture where students trust our staff to report issues. They should have a relationship with their teachers beyond academics,” said Hickman.
According to Schuler, bullying has been a problem since the beginning of time.
“We need to engage our community on what our plan is, and getting their feedback on the plans in place,” said Schuler.
In order to further stop bullying, the Kaneland School District reaches out to outside
firms for advice and support on the fight against bullying. Making the community more involved in the efforts against bullying is a huge need.
“Our [school district and community] efforts are towards the same thing,” Schuler said.
Kaneland School District Bullying Policy
The policy is distributed into three levels. Level one is the lowest severity of bullying, as the level increases then the severity of the act increases and so does the punishment.
The forms of bullying under level one include exclusion, rumors/gossip, physical contact with no harm or intent to harm such as poking or invasion of space and cyber bullying.
At level one, there are intervention efforts put in place to make the bully realize his or her wrongs.
The forms of bullying under level two include aggressor enjoys popularity from the bullying, aggressor feels the target deserved the actions, physical aggression, cyber bullying with intent to incite group mentality, aggressor feels superior and authoritative over the target and racist remarks.
In level two, there is a deeper search into the aggressors vulnerabilities. This is done in order to possibly find the source of the bullying, the reason why the aggressor is doing the actions.
The aggressor at level three is thought to be manipulative and a repetitive liar. Actions that fall under level three include verbal and physical attacks, multiple acts on one target, aggressor perceives others are against them, termination of someone close to them, feels superior with intentional harm and enjoys the status of being feared.
With a level three act, the incident is immediately referred to administration to conduct an investigation. Intervention includes invite outside support, mandatory anger management training, and research support system including outside medical interventions.
Bullying is a seriouse problem and will be handled acordingly. Every precaution will be taken to ensure it has been stopped.