Students, teachers agree school should crack down on bullying

Most students experience some degree of harassment or teasing from their peers, some much more seriously than others. In order to prevent bullying from spreading, assistant principal Brian Safine said that the administration has recently taken steps to open its harassment policy to include bullying.

In addition, the school has clarified what is considered bullying through staff meetings and e-mails in order to put a limit on harassment, according to Safine and assistant principal Kevin Mount.

“Part of what we’re planning on doing in terms of bullying is really trying to work proactively, particularly with our ninth and tenth grade students as they come in,” Mount said. “Everything out there for the most part is prevention—educating students, making it clear to students what bullying is and working to raise awareness so that students don’t engage in that behavior.”

According to Mount, the school defines bullying as recurring conduct that involves hostile actions toward one’s peers.

“Regardless of where it takes place, behavior that denies the targeted individual access to the educational program [is bullying],” Mount said. “If it affects your ability to come to school and access the educational program, it’s our responsibility to address it.”

Despite the administration’s efforts, some students believe that the school has not done enough to combat bullying. Junior Megan Kao has a friend who originally attended Saratoga High but was bullied on Facebook to the point where he transferred schools.

“[A student] made a Facebook group mocking [the victim] and bullying him,” Kao said. “They invited all of the school, all of their friends in Saratoga to see. Pretty much the entire school thought that, ‘Oh, this guy’s a joke,’ so he left to another school. It’s really sad because he was one of my good friends.”

Kao feels that the school did not prevent bullying or interfere when it escalated.

“This is definitely not just a small thing, like just saying ‘you’re ugly’ or ‘you’re fat,’” Kao said. “It’s actually affecting a student. They’ve told us ‘don’t do this, don’t do that,’ but I don’t think the school really cares that much. I was really surprised by the school’s lack of interference because they did nothing, and that other student who started the group? He’s still fine; he’s still going to school as happy as ever.”

Mount said that bullying cases, like the one involving Kao’s friend, often go “under reported” and thus are not dealt with appropriately.

“My hunch is, from the student perspective, it’s probably more of an issue than what the adults of the school know,” Mount said.

Last year, Kao attended Challenge Day, a program designed to discourage bullying through celebrating the differences that make each person unique. During freshman year, she took the mandatory Health/Driver’s Ed course, which also paints verbal and physical abuse in a negative light. Kao, however, believes that neither program effectively helps to prevent bullying.

“Health class and Challenge Day give us an insight into other people’s problems, so maybe we know that we’re not the only one with eating disorders, we’re not the only one being called fat,” Kao said. “They gives us a sense of unity with people we normally don’t talk with, but after a while, that feeling of intimacy slowly fades away.”

As if bullying peers were not terrible enough, there have been reports of students teasing special education students.

“[Students] will make comments and say something ‘funny’ about my students,” said special education teacher Courtney Crase, “which, in the end, is not funny. It’s teasing, and not bullying, because my students don’t understand. It’s beyond their control.”

Crase believes that part of stopping harassment comes from within the bullies themselves.

“I think bullying comes from one person saying something to another, and there’s fear, there’s hurt, there are a lot of other emotions that come from it,” Crase said. “I think that whoever is being bullied needs to say something.”

Regardless of how trivial calling somebody a bad name can seem in high school, the consequences of it can carry on far into the future.

“Bullying really hurts people,” Crase said. “Some carry that for life, and others get over it, but you always look back at how you were bullied. If you become a better person, you think about the way you bullied others.”