Not long after school started last fall, a teacher at Westfield High School came into principal Peter Renwick’s office with an urgent message. Under New Jersey’s tough new anti-bullying law, any school employee who observes or hears about a possible case of bullying must tell their principal at once. The report starts the clock running on an investigation with potentially serious consequences, for an affirmative finding will stain a student’s permanent record.
Earlier that day, the teacher had overheard a student insult a classmate by calling her a “pig” and referring to her parents as “illegal immigrants.” When the teacher took the victim aside, she confided her harasser had been calling her hurtful names and demeaning her family for some time. The case turned out to be one of seven complaints substantiated at Westfield High between September 2011 and January of this year; 10 other complaints were found to be conflicts rather than harassment, intimidation or bullying, the three behaviors targeted by the law.
Those 17 investigations were complex and time-consuming, but Renwick, 47, took them in stride. “We’re a very high-achieving school, but we’re constantly looking at social learning,” he says. “I do not see [bullying] as a large problem, but one that must be addressed seriously for those who are affected. We’ll use the law to help create an even better culture of pride and respect.”
Thousands of school bullying investigations have been conducted in New Jersey since school opened last fall, elevating awareness in a state already sensitive to the problem. In 2002, following reports that the shooters in the Columbine school killings were bullied outcasts, the New Jersey Legislature enacted one of the first anti-bullying laws in the country. Lawmakers subsequently amended the law three times, extending it to cover cyberbullying and requiring schools to adopt standardized investigative practices.
The final version, known as the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights, is often thought to have resulted from the suicide of Tyler Clementi, the 18-year-old Rutgers student who leaped to his death from the George Washington Bridge on September 22, 2010, after his roommate used a webcam to spy on him during a romantic encounter with another man.
In fact, legislators were already drafting an updated law, although bipartisan support for the measure swelled after the tragedy. By then youth bullying had come to be recognized as a nationwide public health problem. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, victims are at risk of depression, anxiety, poor school adjustment and even death. Bullies are at risk of substance use, academic problems and violence in later life. The experience can also prove toxic to bystanders who fail to intervene. Under New Jersey law, bullying takes many forms but always involves an imbalance of power.
Despite a bumpy start, the new law is a success, according to Dr. Stuart Green, a clinical social worker at Overlook Medical Center in Summit. Green founded the New Jersey Coalition for Bullying Awareness and Prevention shortly after Columbine. Virtually every day since, for 12 years now, Green has counseled anguished parents who call him for help. “In the past, we’ve allowed schools to be places where kids, especially vulnerable kids, are hurt. We’ve still got a long way to go. But schools are finally getting that bullying is a child-rights issue,” he says. “They’re learning that the proper response is to say, ‘We’re sorry your child has been hurt on our watch. We want to take a deeper look at what’s happened to your child and see what it means about the culture and climate of our school.’”
While not universally admired by school administrators, most acknowledge the law has fundamentally changed attitudes. It treats bullying as a form of violence, not a harmless rite of passage. The law covers incidents on or off school grounds and may be invoked by a single gesture or utterance, not just a pattern of behavior. “People are much more aware of what bullying is, and not just students. Parents also now know it’s not just a normal disciplinary problem,” says Kenilworth superintendent Sylvan Hershey.
Advocates for bullied kids say schools that used to sweep bullying under the rug, or even fight claims, are now listening. “We had anecdotal information about one child with ADD who was bullied mercilessly, yet teachers turned a blind eye. He would come home crying,” says Luanne Peterpaul, a Springfield attorney and vice chair of Garden State Equality, an advocacy group for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality. “Once this new law came down, we were able to meet right away with the responsible parties. They agreed he should probably be in another school, and we were able to transfer him. This kid came home from the new school, looked at his parents, and said ‘Mom, Dad, do you believe someone said Hi to me today? And someone told me they liked my shirt?’” Peterpaul also noted that the student recently made honor roll for the first time.
“This is what a safe and secure learning environment results in: changing a child who was bullied, depressed and performing below expectations into a student who now loves going to school,” says Peterpaul.
In January, schools were required to turn over data on bullying reports from the first half of the current school year. The New Jersey Department of Education is not expected to analyze the data until summer. But a sampling of school districts queried for this article said the majority of their investigations originated in grades 6 through 9 or 10. Some of the bullying occurred off school grounds, usually via text messaging and Facebook posts. Girls were as likely as boys to be aggressors but used verbal putdowns and gossip rather than physical aggression. Disciplinary measures included detention and suspension.
“Kids got picked on for a multitude of perceived characteristics, including race, sex, ancestry, sexual orientation and physical or learning disabilities. Yet being seen as having low social status at school underlies most bullying,” says Maurice J. Elias, a Rutgers psychologist and researcher. “I believe most bullying takes place because the adults in schools are not fully clear that bullying is unacceptable. It is certainly the case that those with low or marginal social status in the school are more likely to be bullied, but it’s almost never everyone of a given group that is victimized. So many students with low social status will, in fact, not be bullied. You’re more likely to be bullied if you’re isolated. Bullies don’t want to pick on victims who have the potential to retaliate.”
In Edison Township, most of the bullying allegations made this year involved words rather than physical aggression, according to Sandra Reid, the district’s anti-bullying coordinator. “The reasons ran the gamut. It could be clothes. A haircut. Weight. Height. Name-calling about someone’s girth. Using the word gay in such a way that someone else takes offense,” Reid says. Edison pulled out all the stops to integrate the anti-bullying campaign into school life, staging assemblies, class activities and plays to heighten student awareness. Drop boxes—sometimes labeled “bully boxes”—where complaints can be made anonymously, were placed in prominent places.
The early phase of the law’s implementation was filled with rough spots.
Parents of accused students frequently threatened school administrators with legal action, but no appeals had reached the state commissioner of education as of March 1. In one case reported at a symposium at Seton Hall Law School, parents of two middle school girls, reported to have used racial slurs in the cafeteria, leaped to their children’s defense. One of the parents collected signed statements from the girls’ friends contending the language was not intended to be insulting. (The principal of their school decided otherwise. Each girl was suspended for a day and ordered to eat lunch alone for a week.)
Not all districts welcomed the mandate. The Allamuchy Board of Education in Warren County, a pre-K through 8 district with two schools, successfully challenged the law as an impermissible unfunded mandate. In a complaint to the state Council of Local Mandates, the board said the law required Allamuchy to fill anti-bullying staff positions and train employees, but failed to cover the costs. A half dozen other districts went on record as concurring, and the Council ultimately ruled in their favor. In March, the state Legislature appropriated $1 million in grants to cash-strapped districts, settling the issue, at least temporarily.
Interpreting the law proved a challenge despite its relatively clear language. At the Seton Hall symposium, for example, John Geppert Jr., president of the New Jersey Association of School Attorneys, asked his audience to imagine the following scenario. A seventh-grade girl, accustomed to eating lunch with a group of close friends, leaves them at the table to get a drink. When she returns, she finds that everyone has moved to a new table. They ignore her. Is this bullying?
Geppert did not supply an answer, but when contacted later, answered no to his question. “It doesn’t go to a perceived characteristic of the girl,” he says. “You usually need some kind of characteristic to open the door. It doesn’t take much, but girls being mean doesn’t really qualify.”
But another attorney had the opposite reaction. “Social exclusion? That’s victimization personified,” says Leisa-Anne Smith, a former educator and lawyer who provides free anti-bullying training for school personnel through the New Jersey State Bar Foundation. “How is that not mean-spirited, bullying behavior?”
Some schools are taking a defensive legal stance, launching investigations following minor conflicts, such as a second-grader pulling a classmate’s hair or a kindergartener telling a classmate, “You can’t sit here.” These incidents came to be known as “pigtail stories,” according to state assemblyman John F. McKeon, a lead sponsor of the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights. “A certain percentage of professionals in the schools have chosen to cover their ass rather than do their jobs,” he says. “I’ve had people tell me, ‘I had to report when Sally got her hair pulled, or so-and-so rolled his eyes,’ ” he says. “Shame on them. That’s showing disrespect to what the law is all about.”
Down the road, the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights has the potential to serve as a catalyst for an attitude change that could result in the widespread elimination of intimidation and harassment, according to Elias, the Rutgers psychologist. “It could take 100 years, but every reduction we get, every time someone doesn’t get bullied, is good,” he says. “It means we’re saving kids’ lives.”
Mary Jo Patterson writes frequently on education for New Jersey Monthly.