Bullying: local student speaks out on issue

By Mike Ford, The Delphos Herald
Published:  Monday, September 24, 2007 (10 months, 2 weeks ago)
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By MIKE FORD
The Delphos Herald

Whether one has been a victim, perpetrator or witness, most area residents have at some point come in contact with a common behavioral problem in most schools. Humiliation, intimidation and verbal and physical abuse of others exemplify behavior commonly known as “bullying.”
One local student was bullied so badly that he left his former school. He requested his name not be used in this story to protect himself from those who went so far as to beat him up and throw him down a flight of stairs, cracking his ribs in the process.
“It was my freshman year when things got really ugly. They would slam me into lockers, try to put me in the lockers, lock me in the locker room so I would be late for practice, beat me up and humiliate me in front of people. They would do a lot of stuff to me and it was pretty bad,” he said.
The student indicated there was a ring-leader with followers who would organize a small group to gang up on him. He felt “boxed in” and isolated.
“I felt like if I told anyone, they’d beat me up outside of school; I felt like I should handle it on my own, but I couldn’t. I needed help but I felt like they wouldn’t understand what I was going through. It’s hard being bullied,” he said.
Being terrorized at school makes learning difficult.
“I had to go to school every day and deal with this. There were days that I got beat up so bad I had to avoid going home. I had to clean myself up and then say I fell or something when my mom and dad asked me what happened,” he said.
He felt like he was targeted because he was always an outcast, which he says was because he didn’t come from a family with a certain status in the community, which would have made him more widely accepted. He also says he has yet to overcome the fears his experiences created. He also felt demeaned.
“It feels like you lose control when people bully you — they make you feel like a rag doll and for no reason. If they did have a purpose, it would be even harder,” he said.
According to Dr. Roger Page, a psychology professor at Ohio State University at Lima, control issues are typically what causes a bully to mistreat others.
“The less control one feels one has in his or her life, the more one wants to turn the tables and have control over others,” he said.
Dr. Page indicates that children are often angered by things going on in the home, where they are not the authority figures in control over the things which affect them. This often mixes with negative self-esteem.
“One of the results of a poor family situation turns out to be a poor self-concept. If you have low self-esteem and you’re able to belittle someone else so you feel others are below you in some way, then it boosts your self-esteem,” he said.
Delphos City Schools Guidance Counselor Quincy Kiracofe agrees with Dr. Page’s assessment.
“A lot of bullies have low self-esteem and are trying to make others feel like they’re more powerful than them by asserting themselves a little more,” she said.
Though adults also display the behavior, Kiracofe says it begins in elementary school.
“Usually, at the elementary level and even at the middle school level, it’s teasing and name-calling; that’s the main thing we see when we talk about bullying,” she said. “At the middle school level, they’re trying to find their identity and fit in. You’ll still have name-calling but you’ll also have pushing and tripping in the hallway. Boys are more physical but girls tend to make fun of each other based on their looks or the clothes they wear.”
St. John’s School’s Alan Unterbrink also deals with bullying and sees it happen outside the classroom where teachers are not present.
“More of it happens when there is a change in classrooms — in the hallway or the cafeteria,” he said.
He also says students utilize e-mail or internet sites such as MySpace when threatening or insulting their peers.
Kiracofe says schools implement positive values in the classroom as a preventative measure.
“At Franklin, we have an anti-bullying program where I go in and talk to them about how to handle their anger, being kind to each other and accepting differences. So, we do guidance lessons that help and teachers reinforce those lessons every day in the classroom, on the playground, in the hallways and in the cafeteria. They also focus on getting students to work together cooperatively in groups because a lot of times when kids work together, they see that they’re not so different and are more accepting,” she said.
Unterbrink says because bullying happens at times when school officials do not witness the behavior, the school does not find out it is going on until parents come forward. Kiracofe says if students will have the courage to speak up before the problem escalates, the school can get it under control.
“Unless a child comes forward, we many times don’t know and it becomes more of a problem. At that point, parents are involved but if they come through the channels, our school system has been very good about getting to the bottom of these things and stopping them,” she said.

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