Brandon students take stand against bullying

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This article was published 05/04/2013 (4747 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Social media has made it easy for any student to send threats to their peers. Behind the false security of a computer screen, pushing someone to the brink takes only a few keystrokes.

The now-prolific use of Facebook and other instant messaging services has given the power to any student to bully peers from virtually anywhere outside of the school walls.

Bullying has always remained a secretive affair. Bullies, victims and bystanders remain silent, but a bright spotlight has been put on the subject recently through government legislation and local educational events, such as the Stand Up Against Bullying Forum at Crocus Plains Regional Secondary School held yesterday.

Close to 2,000 Brandon students from grades 5 to 9 attended the event which aimed to break the silence of bullying, organized by the Brandon School Division and Youth Revolution, which is made up of more than 300 Brandon students.

The forum was held conveniently in the wake of Bill 18, a proposed provincial anti-bullying law which has been criticized by religious groups in recent weeks for forcing to accommodate groups that promote equality for gays and lesbians.

But at its core, the bill aims to stomp out bullying in schools and it includes specific wording to keep up with the fast-paced changes in the way students communicate to include social media, text messaging, instant messaging, websites and email.

Parent Dayna Galatiuk said while her son in Grade 11 is well-versed in the risks of living life online, her Grade 3 daughter uses the online chat service Kik and has already experienced problems with a girl from another school bullying her online.

“I don’t know if we’re starting our prevention practices as early as we should be,” she said. “We need to start talking about it a lot earlier.”

Galatiuk, who’s also a counsellor at Meadows School, said the sense of bravery social media offers to bullies has made the issue more complicated.

“The other forms are still there, but this has just complicated it, and students have made a go of it underground more than ever,” she said.

“When I was a kid, there was bullying, of course there was bullying, but you couldn’t pass a rumour about somebody as easily as you can now.”

Recently, a Brandon court banned a 12-year-old girl from using Facebook for a year after she used the site to send threatening messages to two other young girls.

One message read: “You have no idea how bad I want to strangle you two girls!!!! Omg! Yu just wait. Your time will come!”

Facebook’s policy states users must be at least 13 years old to sign up but users can simply lie about their age when they apply online for access.

While teachers and students filed in and out of the gymnasium during the day’s bullying presentations, Krystal Kayne, vice president of the Brandon University Anti-Bullying Society encouraged people to sign their names on pieces of fabric that will eventually make up a blanket that will be sent to the Manitoba legislature.

Kayne, a mother of a 13-year-old autistic child who she says has been relentlessly harassed at school, said there isn’t enough anti-bullying programming in elementary schools but hopes Bill 18 is a first step to earlier intervention.

The zero-tolerance policies touted by schools “is a joke,” Kayne said and more education for younger kids is necessary to tackle the issue.

“I expect schools to protect my child and I don’t feel like there is that,” she said. “My son would come home black and blue and I wouldn’t even get a call from the school stating that anything happened.”

A victim of bullying, Grade 10 Crocus Plains student Stephanie Cantlon was one of the Youth Revolution organizers at yesterday’s event and said she sees the importance of targeting the grades 5 to 9 that attended.

“It’s a good thing we’re doing this just so that people know what’s going on,” she said wearing a pink shirt that read “acceptance.”

“It’s good that we’re showing these kids so that when they come into high school, they’ve seen the presentation and they know what’s going on.”

She said bullying in schools “is a severe issue” and like many other students, her family situation has been a target of an overactive rumour mill.

The term ‘bullying’ seems to collect more meanings by the day and Earl Oxford School counsellor Angela McGuire-Holder said students, teachers, and parents need to be careful when associating the term with any unkind behaviour.

“The media has made it something huge without giving people enough of an idea about what bullying is,” she said. “The scope is too large … If you can’t define it, you can’t fix it.”

The issue in Canada reached a boiling point after Amanda Todd, the B.C. teen who killed herself after she fell victim to bullying and cyber stalking, made international headlines and sparked the nation to support anti-bullying causes like Youth Revolution and drove governments to draw up new legislation.

From a Grade 1 student pushing a classmate during recess to a Grade 12 student pushing a classmate to the brink of suicide, McGuire-Holder said there’s a huge range of bullying types and victims have to able to identify them.

“I want kids to know, but I want them to be educated.”

But, she said, any unkind behaviour can make its way into any part of someone’s life, young and old and the increased attention bullying has garnered can only help the cause.

“It’s prevalent in the shopping mall, it’s prevalent at home with their siblings, it’s prevalent at the school and at the theatre,” she said.

» gbruce@brandonsun.com