October is National Bullying Prevention Month, a time for communities to raise awareness of the effects of bullying. In that spirit, I spoke with Scott Poland, professor in the Center for Psychology Studies and NSU’s resident expert on school crisis and youth suicide.
Poland is also the co-director of NSU’s Office of Suicide and Violence Prevention and the author of four related books. He’s assisted schools after shootings, suicides and natural disasters and has testified before Congress four times. He discussed how NSU students and staff can support bullying victims and prevent such behavior. Here are some highlights from my interview with him.
Defining college bullying
I think we would all agree that bullying tends to peak in middle school and thankfully, gets reduced as students get older, especially at the college level. But bullying is really all about power. People always say, “How do you know it’s not just good-natured teasing?”
If we were teasing each other, we’d walk away at about the same level. But when it’s bullying, it’s humiliating. It’s repetitive. It’s nasty. It’s really intended to have power over the other person. And I think it would be too simplistic to say that it ends at high school. We have to realize that it does happen at the college level. It’s more about exclusion; it’s more about spreading rumors. It’s less overt, in the face; it’s not typically pushing or shoving someone.
I think that’s probably the thing that would be most different about bullying at the college level; it would be pretty unlikely to be physical. But it certainly could involve saying a lot of very hurtful things or spreading rumors or gossip — or things that cause someone great embarrassment.
Social media’s role
Sometimes, somebody will say, “Well this couldn’t really be bullying because it was one thing. The definition says bullying is repetitive.” But if it was one thing that was posted on social media and hundreds of people saw it and lots of people wrote in or added to it or approved of it, then, in the student’s mind, that one thing can become really huge.
I think social media networks provide a tremendous challenge. Pay attention when posts are really inappropriate or call negative attention to someone or are degrading. Think of how you can support the person who is a recipient of those, how you can persuade others. Say, “I don’t appreciate this” or “This isn’t cool” or “This is inappropriate.”
Accepting diversity
I’m especially concerned about the bullying and harassment that students with disabilities receive. The other thing that’s really critical to realize is that LGBT students are also bullied and harassed more than their heterosexual peers.
South Florida is a place that accepts diversity. I grew up in a small town in Kansas. If you and I were going to try to start a gay-straight alliance on a college campus, you know what they’d tell us? Not gonna happen.
And that’s the case for a lot of states; the more rural they are — they’re just not going to deal with it. And Florida, I would say, almost could be divided into different sections, with the South Florida section more liberal, more accepting. The further north you go, the less of that there is.
But I guess the main point is that we all need to be aware that the LGBT population — they have more suicides and more suicide attempts than their heterosexual peers. It has nothing to do with sexual orientation. It has to do with the crap and rejection that they get sometimes from the people closest to them. And though I believe it’s much improved, in terms of acceptance over the years, it’s certainly not good enough. We haven’t progressed as far as we need to.
What to do as a witness
Some people don’t like the term bystander. They like the term witness. And when you’re a witness to something, this sort of implies, “I should do something.”
And what I would hope is that people would feel empowered to speak up, to let those bullying know, “We don’t appreciate this. This is not the kind of climate we want. I don’t like this.”
There’s actually psychology studies that say that bystanders actually can experience anxiety. And that’s because they feel bad for the other person. They feel bad that they didn’t at least try to do something. And doing something could involve saying something. It could involve taking the person who’s being bullied and harassed away from the situation. It could involve reaching out to them later.
The main message to convey to someone who’s being bullied is really a pretty simple one: “You don’t deserve this. You are not bringing this upon yourself. And I’m going to be there with you. We’re going to get this stopped.” Probably the single greatest thing that we all need to convey is “This is not OK. You’re not bringing this on yourself.”
Often our most natural instinct is to minimize, tell them it’s not that bad, give them a pep talk or say, “Oh, those kids don’t matter to you anyway. You should just stay away from them.” But, the problem is, when they’re in your same class or your same fraternity or sorority, whatever organization, it’s impossible.
How everyone can help combat bullying
Do random acts of kindness. Listen carefully. Pay attention. Notice students who seem not involved in things and think of ways to bring them in.
Fortunately, I think, as students mature, the usual things we think of in terms of popularity — whether it’s physical attractiveness or money or gregarious personalities — we start to realize that there are a lot of other things that are important.
One of the big things I like to say to students is “Perhaps the only way to truly find ourselves is in service to other people.” I would argue that a very healthy college student is one who volunteers. It’s almost like, if you’re really sincere in wanting to help others and you volunteer, it just seems really unlikely that you would ever be a part of bullying or that you’d stand idly by.
It’s especially important for girls. They tend be more exclusive, talking behind others’ backs and spreading rumors. Accusations of promiscuity get spread a lot in the college population.
How bullying is related to suicide
You don’t go from being someone who’s never thought about suicide to one thing happens this afternoon and you make a suicide attempt. That’s not to say that that couldn’t happen. It’s just that, the vast majority of the time, there’s depression and other mental health problems or mental illnesses.
In fact, the simplest way to view suicide is as untreated or undertreated mental illness. And then, there’s usually also a history of adversary that may go all the way back to childhood: mistreatment, sexual abuse, physical abuse, lots of disappointment, tragedies, loses, maybe a substance abuse problem.
In fact, the other day, I saw something here, at NSU, that said “Bullying causes suicide.” That is too strong a statement. Is bullying a contributing factor? Absolutely. Is there a strong association? Absolutely. But, we can’t say bullying causes suicide.
Suicide is the third leading cause of death for high school kids. The literature says 7.8 percent of high school kids made a suicide attempt in the last 12 months. Does it make any sense that no one talks to students about this in high school?
A lot of people believe that we shouldn’t bring the topic up. If we talk about it with kids, we’re going to somehow plant the idea in their heads. And to counteract that, I’ll give them statistics and I’ll say, “Look at these statistics. Do you think you can find a high school kid that doesn’t know someone who attempted suicide?” Why wouldn’t we talk to them about what warning signs to look for and what to do?
We need to use the momentum that we have going for bullying prevention, recognize the strong association and lobby for suicide prevention.
Frankly, what we want here at NSU is for our suicide prevention training to be mandated. Currently, it is mandated for every new employee, and we are very glad of that. But we’d like to figure out a way to make it something that every student gets.
For more information on the Office of Suicide and Violence Prevention, visit nova.edu/suicideprevention/index.html and look for a story in The Current’s feature section in our Oct. 29 issue.
