If the results from a University of Maine study can be construed as representative of university life in the U.S., more than one in five students have witnessed hazing. A quick glance at the news reveals a surprising number of hazing incidents (including the hazing murder of an Iraq veteran), and efforts to protect the victims through enlightened policies and legislation. Here is a good general resouce on hazing.
Apart from protecting the victim, I think the high numbers of witnesses who apparently do little or nothing call for a renewed public discussion about the bystander effect. This is a difficult topic to bring up, especially if you’re trying to point out and prevent the Bystander Effect in progress. In my experience, anyone who is part of the Bystander group will have a knee-jerk defensive reaction to the implied accusation rather than using the information to redirect their attention and help the victim. Perhaps what we also need is a social pact that makes it safe for people to bring up a Bystander issue: i.e., no hostility, retaliation, ostracization, or attempts to turn the group against the person who dares to point out Bystander behavior. The Bystander Effect is real, and a quick glance at all the news stories about hazing shows that people are getting hurt and even killed because of the social obstacles to intervention.
An interesting Wisconsin State Journal article argues that the Left and the Right are uniting in opposition to the Bully video game. It would be interesting to see if there’s a line between supporters and opponents that can be drawn elsewhere. For instance, would the positions reflect a generational divide? Or perhaps the battle over Bully is defined by economic as opposed to political positions: is this a free market vs. planned economy showdown?
I’m personally still in favor of parents choosing not to buy the game instead of banning it. I think it’s providing a terrific focus for conversation about bullying.
Also, I learned today that 160,000 students have reported skipping out on school because they fear being bullied. I wonder how this number would look if other strategies to avoid bullying were factored in. For instance, my father drove me every day to a school in another town for my senior year in high school to dissuade me from dropping out of my hometown school. I was bullied extensively as a classic chess nerd – though it was probably more of a problem that the social status of my family and my dollar store clothes didn’t match my upper class-ish abilities and interests. Nothing drives people crazier than a person that’s difficult to categorize.
I often wonder if the mass unsettling of categories isn’t the root of a lot of reactionary politics today. A lot of people have attempted to assert equality without any financial ground to stand on since the 60s: this probably looks like chaos from the perspective of the traditionally privileged. No wonder our government and the media are looking for any rationale – scientific or religious or judicial – to put people “in their place”. A banner example is Tom Delay’s shifty agenda for moral fitness. For the reader’s benefit, here’s a defition of “moral fitness” from a philosophy web site:
Moral fitness theory is a rationalist theory that includes the notion that the human mind is able to grasp the various moral relations that result from the essential natures of things in the universe; e.g., the nature of humans and God creates a relation that necessitates the allegiance of humans to their superior (this view was made most famous by Samuel Clarke).
The idea of “moral fitness” probably sounds comforting to the people dismayed by the confusion and contradictions of the modern world. However, I imagine it’s a lot more comforting for those who deem themselves to be the “superiors” than those who are shoved into the class obliged to proffer a natural “allegiance.”
In Britain there’s currently a debate about whether a tough-talking celebrity should be leading the effort to stop bullying. The case of Jodie Marsh brings into focus a number of questions that usually get sidestepped in public conversation about bullying. First, is the person who fights back also a bully? My sense is that there is considerably social pressure not to fight back. Most of the conceptualizations are patently negative: “two wrongs don’t make a right”, “you can’t fight rankism with more rankism”, “revenge”, and even “terrorism”. It seems to me that this predictable social response supports bullying.
What happens when bullying occurs, and the public fails to support the target when the target fights back? This sends the message that it’s better to take the initiative in a conflict because the public will help pin the victim down. This invigorates bullies with the confidence that they will get away with aggressive action. Also, when other victims see that they will be punished with social disapproval and ostracism if they try to fight back, they will be less inclined to try: their only choice will be to comply. This is exactly the situation that bullies want.
Another question is whether a person who fights back is a good role model for children. It seems to me that there are different kinds of role model. Jodie Marsh is not a role model for turning the other cheek and passively accepting bullying. She is a role model for assertive responses to bullying, and at this point she can provide the victims of bullies with some insight to the bully’s point of view. It all comes down to how society views role models: are they there to reinforce hierarchy or are they there to help children think for themselves and stand up for themselves? Jodie Marsh is obviously a flawed human being. But we are all flawed human beings. Maybe children would be better off talking about the decisions Jodie made than feeling obliged to live up to the example of someone who is presented to them as perfect.
The ideal situation would be to explore at least three scenarios: the person who triumphs by repaying bullying with generosity, the person who repays bullying with more bullying, and the person who ended up in the hospital because they internalized the social pressure not to fight back. Without incorporating at least those three points of view, the anti-bullying movement will soon be mired in platitudes, without a sliver of hope for effective policy or social change.
A few days ago I touched on how the press was exploiting parental anxieties by only presenting the case against the videogame Bully. Yesterday I read another article portraying a mom’s plea against cyberbullying. I’ve also seen a lot of articles lately where HR gurus warn that people are being denied jobs because of Google, bolstered by the frenetic scare-mongering over privacy.
I want to stop bullying as much as anyone, and I’ve also had my experiences with cyberbullying, but it seems to me that corporate and government interests are now manipulating the issue of bullying to shut down or censor the Internet. Politicians and PR departments know that nothing creates an emotional climate for “safety” measures like the image of abused children or grieving parents.
What gives me the chills here is that the Internet is also one of the last frontiers of free speech and public participation. An environment of free speech may include bullies, but it also gives people a platform to speak out against bullies. In the offline world bullies often enjoy enormous control, and victims are easily silenced. On the Internet, the victim can speak out from behind the shield of screenname: this enables the victim to find other people that share his or her experience and may even sow the seeds of public protest, or even a social movement.
If the government establishes control of the Internet in the name of “public safety”, it will be the weakest and most vulnerable members of society who will be stopped from speaking. The powerful will continue to injure and abuse with the same impunity they enjoy in the real world social structure. When protest is contained in free speech zones, there’s no point in bothering to protest. The action is ineffective and the threat fails to inhibit. Power with no effective challenge is totalitarian power.
I’m starting to suspect that there is a lot of behind-the-scenes maneuvering to stage a governement coup against Internet. It will probably work: our country has a sad history of giving away freedoms in the name of security. When it finally happens though, I think the true victims of bullying will be the first to see the mistake.
When black children are bullied by other black children, do administrators disregard the violence as normal behavior?
