Bullying

I recently read the book "Nineteen Minutes" by Jodi Picoult again (I first read it this summer, but it's one of those books you have to read a couple times because it brings up so many questions). It's about a fictional high school shooting - but instead of telling the stories of the victims, it focuses on the shooter. It doesn't just talk about the shooting and the trial and how everyone deals with life after the shooting; it also tells us about the shooter's life growing up.

I love that book - even though it completely messes with my head whenever I read it. But I think the questions this book is asking are the questions we need to ask ourselves - HOW DID HE GET TO THERE? How does a person get to the point where they turn into a shooter?

At my last institution, we had to go through active shooter training. We learned that, if there is an active shooter, you should first see if there's a possibility to get away and if so, you should run and get as far away as possible; if that isn't an option, you should try to barricade yourself in. We learned that if you're hiding in a classroom, you shouldn't all huddle together because you make a much easier target; instead you should try to spread out so if the shooter comes to your room, he won't be able to get you all at once. And they told us that if there's no way to get away or barricade yourself in somewhere, you should try to come up with a plan to take out the shooter - because at this point, it's either you or him.

Sadly enough training like that are necessary - and they're helpful. But I wish we spent at least as much if not more time talking about how we can try to keep our students from getting to the point where they become an active shooter; how we can identify students who may be at risk. I know that's not an easy task but Student Affairs shouldn't be about "being easy." And yes, I don't think we'll ever be able to prevent all of these incidents - but we could at least give it a try.

A lot of schools now have teams of administrators that identify high-risk students and then try to keep up on how they are doing and what we are doing to support them. That's a great start - but what are we doing on the Hall Director and RA level to stop these incidents from happening?

Just this semester, we've had two incidents of homophobic graffiti in my residence hall. I've had roommate conflicts where I was concerned that bullying was involved. I hear students talking about others, judging others.

And what have we done? We've had an anti-bullying program where we asked students to sign an anti-bullying pledge; we later posted those pledges on a bulletin board. I've tried to encourage my staff to have more one-on-one conversations with their residents, to build relationships with every single one of them - some of them have embraced that idea, others still prefer to "send out an e-mail" when I ask them to get a message to residents instead of going out and talking to them one-on-one. *Sigh.

But is it ever enough?

Whenever I read books like that, I can't help thinking about my future children. What can I do, as a mother, to protect them from bullying? How can I make sure that they aren't bullied and that they also aren't the bullies?

The kid in the story was bullied - the teachers and eventually even his mother tried to "toughen" him up and told him to stand up for himself. The teachers thought that if they stepped in, it'd make the bullying worse. And it probably would; but what if the kid isn't able to stand up for him/herself?
I mean, what would you do if your child was being bullied?

I also wonder what makes that difference between one child who's being bullied choosing to commit suicide while another one will turn into a high school or college shooter. Is it their upbringing? Access to weapons? Videogames? Music they're listening to?

I just don't know. But we should know - or at least try to figure it out. And yes, not an easy task - especially considering that many shooters decide to kill themselves in the end - but those who didn't or those we were able to reach out before they hit their breaking point, they need to be our teachers. They have to be the ones we ask; not to judge them but to find out the truth, to find out what led them to doing what they did.

The thing that always shocks me the most when reading Nineteen Minutes is that nobody is really trying to figure out the truth. In the trial, the prosecution is just trying to prove that this kid was a murderer, a monster. The defense is trying to use anything they can find to argue that he was provoced, to create sympathy for him. But the defense lawyer never once asks the kid why he did it; because if his client told him that he planned the shooting, the defense lawyer couldn't lie in court and try to get him off. And yes, I get that's how our system works. But seriously??? If during the trial nobody is trying to figure out what REALLY happen, then who is? And if we don't figure out the truth, then what can we learn from this tragedy?