From bullying springs more hate, violence

The 14-year-old former Colonial School District student arrested yesterday after police found weapons in his home was plotting to "take revenge on society," because he saw himself as the victim of bullying, Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr. said yesterday.

Neighborhood children said that the boy, when he was in sixth grade, had been harassed by other students because of his weight, said Sally Black, a school district resident and an assistant professor of health services at St. Joseph's University who is an expert on youth violence. The boy's parents decided to home-school him 18 months ago.

"My understanding is that students mumbled nasty names about his weight as they walked past his desk," Black said, referring to what she learned from his classmates.

The arrest is one more grim reminder that bullying, once regarded by many districts as a problem between two students, has emerged as one of the root causes of school shootings.

That belief is borne out by a 2000 Secret Service report on the prevention of school attacks that said in two-thirds of the shooting cases studied, the attacker had felt persecuted, bullied, threatened, attacked, or injured before the incident. Many had experienced long-standing and severe bullying and harassment, which some attackers described as "torment."

On Wednesday in Cleveland, 14-year-old Asa H. Coon wounded four people at his school before killing himself. Reports indicate that he was bullied.

According to the Stop Bullying Now! Web site, sponsored by the National Bullying Prevention Campaign, studies show that 15 percent to 25 percent of students are bullied with some frequency, while 15 percent to 20 percent report that they bully others.

In an effort to combat bullying, State Sen. Connie Williams (D., Montgomery) has proposed that Pennsylvania school districts must adopt anti-bullying policies.

"Student bullying is much more than name-calling or shoving on the playground," she said. "It is the underlying cause of school violence, truancy, and even teen suicide. To begin to lower the statistics on these types of events, we need to address the underlying cause."

It's an issue the district must take seriously, said Black, who said she was frustrated several years ago when her son, also a student in the Colonial District, had been "severely victimized" and it was dismissed by an administrator as "joking" between kids.

"I came back and said that's not good enough," Black said. "This was bullying, and it had to be stopped."

She said of the boy arrested yesterday: "We can't just blame this child for what's happened. We have to look at ourselves as adults and say, 'How could this have been prevented?' "

While the district has many anti-bullying initiatives, Black said, she is not convinced that they are far-reaching enough. "You need to change the whole environment so that teachers, when they see the put-downs, say they will not tolerate that behavior," she said.

Cassandra DeLong, the Colonial School District's pupil services director, said yesterday that the district is serious about taking on bullying.

Plymouth Whitemarsh High School is in the second year of using a "No Place for Hate" program that is certified by the Anti-Defamation League. The program is also at the middle school this year. And there is a "Challenge" assembly put on at the middle school that challenges students to stop bullying.

DeLong said the district would be forming a task force to "take a hard look at our programs and make sure we are using the most effective one."

She added: "We are very much engaged in that process. . . . We are not in the dark about it."