OP-Ed: Attorney General Paula Dow on Bullying

Envision this scene: a student approaches his middle school principal and pours out a tale of being harassed verbally, as well as assaulted physically, by classmates who have been bullying him for months. The principal listens sympathetically, then offers a prospective solution: I would certainly understand, he tells the boy, if you retaliated against the bullies with physical force.

If this advice sounds ridiculous to you – like something out of a Saturday Night Live skit or a comedy spoofing adolescent life – think again. It’s what allegedly happened to a student in New Jersey who was bullied for most of his middle school years and went to the school principal seeking help.

That principal, now retired, may have been well-intentioned in his alleged response to the student. He may have been equally well-intentioned when he told the boy’s mother that transferring him to another school might be best for all concerned. But the response was the wrong one. And it is emblematic of an “old school” attitude toward bullying that the Attorney General’s Office, working with other agencies at every level, is committed to changing.

Despite a number of highly-publicized, bullying-related tragedies nationwide and enactment of a new, anti-bullying law here in New Jersey, some young people still do not fully grasp the harm that can be inflicted by bullying. And some well-meaning adults – as the anecdote that began this article suggests – still tend to view bullying as nothing more than a rite of passage that forces victims to “toughen up,” learn how to “handle themselves” and otherwise prepare for the rigors of adult life. But this school-of-hard-knocks theory is misguided.

And bullying is not only a school problem.  It takes place on the street, on the job and online.  Indeed, if the harassment involves “cyber-bullying” – that is, bullying taking place over the Internet, perhaps via a popular social networking site – it can leave victims feeling like the entire world is bullying them, and there is no escape to be found anywhere.

Bullying has been linked to an increased likelihood of future criminal conduct – such as bias crime – by those who engage in bullying. It has been linked to actual – and planned – shooting rampages carried out by those who’ve been the victims of bullying. (Some may remember the arrest in 2003 of three teen-agers in Oaklyn,Camden County. The youths were found walking along a suburban street in the early morning hours dressed in dark clothing and armed with rifles and 2,000 rounds of ammunition. Law enforcement later learned they had planned a shooting spree intended to claim, among others, several classmates who’d bullied them.) And, although suicide is a sensitive and complex issue, bullying has been cited as one possible factor in numerous cases in which young people have taken their own lives.

In short, bullying is a serious community safety issue, and a problem that all of us – including law enforcement, educators, the clergy, civic leaders, and members of municipal, county and state government – have a stake in solving. One element of the solution is to drive home the message that bullying is not harmless and is not simply “part of growing up” – that it does real damage, and can have serious, if not tragic, consequences for all involved. But beyond generating more awareness about the impact of bullying, we must also spread awareness of the fact that actions generally viewed as bullying conduct are not just unkind – they are illegal. And we must let it be known we’re serious by enforcing bullying-related laws with vigor.

`To begin with – and this harkens back to that increasingly discredited “old school” view that bullying is a rite of passage – many people do not realize that bullying can be prosecuted criminally.  For example, bullying that involves assaults, threatened violence, the taking of money or possessions from an individual, restraining someone, use of weapons and/or vandalism has the potential to be treated as criminal conduct.

Admittedly, many cases of bullying do not rise to that level. But these “non-criminal” situations can also have consequences under the law.

In New Jersey, we have the nation’s oldest and most comprehensive state civil rights law – the Law Against Discrimination (LAD). The LAD deals with many types of discrimination. And it focuses specifically on certain “protected” categories, so it would not apply in all cases of bullying. However, for purposes of this discussion, it’s worth noting that the “protected” categories focused on by the LAD are often the very categories focused on by bullies: race, ethnicity, religion, gender, perceived sexual orientation and disability, among others.   In other words, bullying is often bias-based, often targets victims who fall into protected categories under the law, and therefore bullies – as well as those who know about their actions and fail to stop them – can be prosecuted civilly under the LAD.

In addition to the State’s other efforts, many readers are probably aware that New Jersey has enacted an Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act. Under the new law, training is now required for most public school employees on how to spot bullying. School districts are required to form “school safety teams” to review bullying complaints, and to have a school “bullying specialist” on staff. School superintendents are required to report incidents of bullying to the state Department of Education, which will also be grading schools and districts on their efforts at combating bullying.  School employees are required to report all bullying incidents that come to their attention – whether they occur in school or not. With the new law in place, there are now clear protocols for addressing the problem of student-on-student bullying. The schools will know their responsibilities, and the students will know their recourse.

Here in 2011, a much closer nexus is required between educators and law enforcement than ever before. And that is exactly what’s happening.

On an ongoing basis, we are working with New Jersey’s schools and other community stakeholders to generate awareness about the bullying issue. And the current Week of Respect – a requirement under the State’s new anti-bullying law – is vital as well, because it encourages students to take a degree of ownership of their environment, and to emphasize compassion and good citizenship.

New Jersey’s law enforcement and education communities share primary responsibility for ensuring that school buildings are secure, students are protected, and that viable plans are in place for dealing with all manner of threats – including bullying. That is why many schools have sworn law enforcement “resource officers” assigned to them by their local municipal police departments. It is why each of our 21 county prosecutors’ offices, as well as each police department with patrol jurisdiction in a given school district, has personnel assigned to liaison with appropriate local and county school officials. And it is why there is a “Memorandum of Agreement Between Education and Law Enforcement Officials” – approved by my office and the Department of Education – that sets forth policies and procedures for police and school personnel to follow.

We are making progress where bullying is concerned, but the simple fact is that our work is far from done. Bullying remains a problem for many young people and, by extension, for entire communities. By working together, however – and through a sustained commitment to awareness and enforcement – we can change outmoded attitudes and prevail in the effort to end bullying.

Paula T. Dow,

Attorney General