Oreo is also recognizing National Bullying Prevention Month.

Recently, a viewer of WKBT news in Lacrosse, Wisconsin took it upon himself to write a letter to anchor Jennifer Livingston criticizing her weight, accusing her of being a poor role model for young people overwhelmed with obesity. She responded on air, pointing out to viewers that children learn such bullying at home, and that it has to stop:

LIVINGSTON: If you didn’t already know, October is National Anti-Bullying Month, and this is a problem that is growing everyday in our schools and on the internet. It is a major issue in the lives of young people today, and as the mother of three young girls, it scares me to death. Now I am a grown woman, and luckily for me, I have a very tick skin — literally, as that email pointed out — and otherwise, and that man’s words mean nothing to me.

But what really angers me about this is there are children who don’t know better, who get emails as critical as the one I received, or in many cases even worse, each and every day. The internet has become a weapon, our schools have become a battleground, and this behavior is learned. It is passed down from people like the man who wrote me this email. If you were at home and you were talking about the “fat newslady,” guess what? Your children are probably going to go to school and call someone fat. We need to teach our kids how to be kind, not critical, and we need to do that by example. [...]

I leave you with this: To all of the children out there who feel lost, who are struggling with your weight, with the color of your skin, your sexual preference, your disability, even the acne on your face, listen to me right now. Do not let your self-worth be defined by bullies. Learn from my experience that the cruel words of one are nothing compared to the shouts of many.

Watch it:

Cartoon via SlapUpsideTheHead.com

Focus on the Family and the Alliance Defending Freedom have released a new resource they call the Anti-Bullying Policy Yardstick. Under the guise of “helping parents protect their children” the guide actually features an elaborate scheme to ensure religious bullying is protected in schools while students most likely to be targeted for harassment are made more vulnerable. Here are these anti-gay groups’ bullying policy ideals:

• Bullying policies should use “precise” definitions. The goal of this is to prioritize “free speech” over a safe learning environment. ADF even suggests that some forms of harassment might be “objectively reasonable,” implying that the bully should always be given the benefit of the doubt while the impact on the victim is disregarded.
• Bullying policies should not apply to “religious, political, philosophical, or other protected student speech.” Like states that have tried to pass similar laws, this amounts to a “license to bully.” Given that anti-gay bullying is often justified by religious beliefs, such an exemption would invite bullying to persist, defeating the point of a comprehensive policy.
• Bullying policies should not examine intent or include “re-education.” According to this ideal, a student who believes it’s okay to violently harass a gay student should never be taught to understand the nature of sexual orientation. Education about LGBT issues has been repeatedlyproven to make schools safer, but ADF remains adamantly opposed.
• Bullying policies should never highlight certain characteristics (i.e. race, sexual orientation). Obviously, any sensible bullying policy covers all students, but it’s important to recognize certain types of bullying that often go unaddressed. Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin School District provides a prime example of how teachers and administrators neglected to interrupt anti-gay bullying or properly protect LGBT students.
• Bullying policies should have no reporting requirements. The only way to actually address a bullying problem is to identify it. A policy with no reporting requirements for teachers is a policy with no accountability. ADF worries teachers and staff might “over-report bullying,” again, seeking to protect the bullies and not the victims.
• Bullying policies should ignore cyberbullying and off-campus speech. Studies have shown that 90 percent of teens have experienced cyberbullying, but ADF believes it’s possible to distinguish between cyberbullying that happens on-campus or off-campus. Again, this reflects a commitment to protecting bullies’ speech instead of victims’ learning environment.
• Bullying policies should not include any trainings or materials from “homosexual activist groups.” ADF doesn’t believe students should actually learn about why not to bully, only how not to bully, suggesting schools “limit the instruction to a description of bullying behavior.” Learning about LGBT people is important for all young people, even if they may not identify, and it’s completely outlandish for ADF to claim such materials “promote homosexual behavior.”
• Bullying policies should always inform parents if their child is bullied or accused of bullying. This policy would be incredibly problematic for LGBT students who experience bullying, who would very likely be outed to their parents through this process. The leading reason 40 percent of homeless youth are LGBT is family rejection, so schools should consider each case independently and act in ways that best protect each child. ADF’s priority is a notion of “parents’ rights” that can further harm LGBT students or protect bullies from remediation.
• Bullying policies should ignore anonymous complaints. Bullying creates a culture of fear, even for bystanders. Any student with the courage to report bullying, even anonymously, should be taken seriously. Again, ADF’s policy blatantly ensures more bullying goes unaddressed.
• Bullying laws should exempt private schools. The state guarantees an educational experience for all young people, and just as private schools should be held accountable to academic standards, so too should they be held accountable for safe learning environments.

Point for point, the Alliance Defense Fund’s model policies, promoted by Focus on the Family’s True Tolerance page, intentionally protect bullies while making LGBT students more vulnerable to victimization and harassment. This “yardstick” measures only one thing: intolerance.

The Anti-Bullying Caucus, a bipartisan caucus founded by Democratic Congressman Mike Honda and devoted to stopping bullying, will offically launch tomorrow. Honda and about three dozen other representatives are behind the new caucus, whose mission statement says that it is “committed to the belief that all communities deserve a safe environment to thrive, and that our nation is in urgent need of solutions that stop bullying.”

Honda released a message describing the importance of preventing bullying, saying:

Every year, millions of Americans are physically or psychologically attacked on the basis of their skin color, ethnicity, physical or mental abilities, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, religion, or age. Addressing the bullying epidemic – in our schools, in the workplace, in assisted-living facilities – is a concern very close to my heart. It is our responsibility as human beings to empower the individuals who are discriminated against, scapegoated, and silenced by society.

America is threatened by an epidemic where more than thirteen million children are teased, taunted, and physically assaulted by their peers each year—embodied in racism, xenophobia, homophobia, sexism, or simply means of letting go of aggression and bottled emotions. This bullying is not confined to classroom walls; the fear and hurt that so many people feel in America today is an urgent call to action. As an educator of more than thirty years and a member of Congress who was bullied as a child, I am inspired to do my part. That’s why I founded the Congressional Anti-Bullying Caucus.

The bullying epidemic has reached national headlines in recent year, and growing support has been mounted for those targeted by bullies. The Obama administration, for its part, has endorsed two national anti-bullying bills, the Student Non-Discrimination Act (SNDA) and the Safe Schools Improvement Act (SSIA). SNDA adds sexual orientation and gender identity to federal education nondiscrimination law and prevents the bullying of LGBT youth. Likewise, the SSIA increases schools’ bullying and harassment prevention programs, including those focusing on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Honda’s own experience with bullying is only one of the many personal stories recounted in the caucus’ press release. The report features several personal stories from victims of bullying, and the caucus will be posting another story — meant to be a “call to action” — each day.

– Nina Liss-Schultz

The New York Senate and Assembly have both passed a new cyberbullying provision that extends the effects of the Dignity For All Students Act passed two years ago. The LGBT-inclusive amendment defines cyberbullying as “harassment or bullying that occurs through any form of electronic communication” and will have the following effects:

[It will] establish protocols to respond to cyberbullying, harassment, bullying and discrimination, including designating a school official to receive and promptly investigate reports; take actions to prevent recurrences; coordinate with law enforcement when appropriate; and develop a bullying prevention strategy; and provide notice to all school community members of the school’s policies. It would also set training requirements for current and new school employees.

Cyberbullying is difficult to track, but various studies have shown that is nevertheless prevalent. The Pew Research Center found that 90 percent of teens encounter cyberbullying, 21 percent of whom admitted to joining in. An AP-MTV poll found that half of all young people regularly encounter discriminatory slang online, and just as many believe it’s okay to use such language with their friends. In such a vastly unmoderated space as the Internet, training educators to recognize and intervene when cyberbullying takes place is essential for protecting young people from its detrimental effects.

After Jessica Barba (right) was suspended, some of her friends, like Hannah Babbino (left) made t-shirts to support her and her anti-bullying video.

As a project for a persuasive speech class, 15-year-old Long Island student Jessica Barba created a video about a fictional girl named Hailey who committed suicide after experiencing extensive bullying and cyberbullying. For that, Longwood School District suspended her for five days, with Superintendent Allan Gerstenlauer calling the video “unfortunate in that it created a substantial disruption to the school.” The school also told her that removing the video would help “soften the blow” of her punishment, but after her suspension was passed down anyway, she reuploaded it. The school also took down the fictional Facebook page Barba had created for the character in the video.

Yesterday, however — after Barba had already missed several days of class — the school decided to lift her suspension and wipe it from her record. She reacted to the decision:

BARBA: I’m going back to school, and that’s what I wanted… The school did the right thing… they turned a wrong into a right, and that’s all that matters. It feels great to have made [the video] go around the world and made it get to different children’s eyes, and I hope made kids be inspired to be not bullies, and stand up for bullying. Speak up, speak out, and that’s what I’ve been saying.

Neither Jessica nor her father would comment on the school’s intention for suspending her in the first place. As one Longwood alum wrote in response to the incident, “The disruption was there before Barba’s project. It is she who is bringing the disruption to light and challenging others to talk about and deal with a real and dangerous problem.”

Watch Barba’s video, which now has over 130,000 views on YouTube: