Bully pulpit

As a high school freshman, Tyana Leake was mocked, cursed and sometimes shoved by the older kids for being tall, for being black, and, as far as she could tell, for just being. She tried to stand up to them, but that made it worse, she said. She eventually grew resigned to the slights and slurs and quietly endured them -- ''I'm not big on snitching" -- though they took a heavy toll.

''It's going to happen no matter what," says the 15-year-old from Brockton. ''It's just the way it goes."

Now a sophomore at Norfolk County Agricultural High School in Walpole, Leake isn't bullied much anymore, but she doesn't want other students to suffer the way she did. So when she heard an antibullying group from Bridgewater State College was visiting, she signed up to attend.

Schoolyard taunts and torments are an age-old reality that has drawn more attention as a serious problem and contributor to school violence since the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado in 1999. But with growing evidence that bullying can impede classroom learning and have emotional consequences for perpetrators and victims alike, politicians and educators are now taking a tougher stance.

Some district attorneys -- the prosecutors from Norfolk and Plymouth counties among them -- are working with school systems to combat bullying, and recently proposed legislation called the Safe Schools Act would require the adoption of formal policies against student harassment.

And this week, state Attorney General Tom Reilly announced a new antibullying pilot program for three school districts, including Randolph. The program, created in response to increased reports of harassment in schools across Massachusetts, will enlist experts to help districts tackle the problem, Reilly said.

The Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center at Bridgewater State College -- led by psychology professor Elizabeth Englander -- is the state's only school-based antibullying program. Created last fall, the center sends college students to middle and high schools across Eastern Massachusetts to help teachers and students discourage bullying.

Schools are contacting the center in droves to tackle what Englander said is an increasingly prevalent problem among adolescents, both in the hallways and neighborhoods and via the Internet and instant messaging.

On a recent Friday morning, she listened to Leake and a dozen classmates vent against some students' harassment of minorities, gays, and other students deemed different from the norm. It's a familiar refrain, she said.

''This is exactly what comes up at most schools," she said. ''Bullying has gotten significantly worse."

Nearly one in three students reported being bullied at least once in the previous month, and 23 percent said they had bullied someone else, in a 2002 national survey by the Families and Work Institute that covered 1,000 youngsters in grades 5 through 12.

Boys are much more likely to bully others and be the target of bullies, according to the National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center.

Yet at Norfolk Agricultural, several girls said they have been teased for their hairstyles and clothes, their physiques, and whom they might be dating. While the taunting rarely leads to physical confrontations, it is alienating and emotionally painful, they said.

Jessie McClelland, a junior, said she was teased throughout middle school by cliques of girls who seemed to single out targets at random.

''They'd hassle you if they didn't like the shirt you were wearing," she said. ''If you covered it up, they'd pick something else."

Gail Murphy, the school's principal, contacted Bridgewater State to create a ''safe school environment" and send a message that bullying will not be tolerated. The center has previously worked with teachers and parents at the school to identify and discipline bullies, and establish rules designed to prevent aggressive behavior.

Englander, while saying schools can reduce bullying through official policies and strict consequences for misbehavior, also tells students bluntly that ending the scourge of bullying is largely up to them.

''These are not things the teachers are going to fix for you," she said at a recent meeting with a dozen Norfolk Aggie students in the lunchroom. ''You know that, right?"

''Yeah," the students muttered.

''You've got to do it," Englander affirmed. ''It's not that we're going to fix bullying. We're going to change the culture so kids who bully don't proliferate. They don't rule the hallways." The main approach to accomplish this, she said later, is to marginalize name-calling and strong-arming by urging students and teachers to take such slights seriously. It's also essential, she said, to convince bystanders that they should not look the other way when bullying occurs.

In a brainstorming session, students suggest holding assemblies, putting up antibullying posters, and starting a diversity club to promote inclusion and tolerance. Many students say the most common targets for bullies are minorities and gays, though the smart and the small are picked on as well. But most bullies don't discriminate, students said.

''There are certain people that just want to hurt everyone else," said Monica Ranger, a junior.

Leake eagerly offered suggestions, but also was unsure they would work.

''I don't know," she said. ''Bullying's about power."

Englander isn't sure why more students are being bullied, but believes it may stem from schools teaching children to mediate their problems rather than seek adult help. Putting the onus on children backfires because many bullies are unreceptive to efforts at conciliation, she said.

Nancy Mullin-Rindler directs the Project on Teasing and Bullying at the Wellesley Centers for Women, which works with elementary and middle schools. Most schools concentrate on resolving individual incidents after they happen, but would do better by promoting unity and respect for all students to prevent incidents, she said.

''They are focusing on the trees rather than the forest," she said.

Some school officials misinterpret bullying as two quarreling children, and do not realize it's ''aggression, not a conflict," Mullin-Rindler added.

The Norfolk district attorney's office holds several antibullying classes a week in area schools, using skits and role-playing to show that cruel comments, rumors, and taunts can cause great distress to already self-conscious teens.

Reducing bullying helps improve education and reduce crime, Norfolk District Attorney William Keating said. About 7 percent of eighth-graders stay home from school at least once a month to avoid bullying, and about 60 percent of bullies will have a criminal record by the age of 24. And while many students do not report bullying incidents to adults, it's happening just the same, he said.

''We ask students how many of them have been bullied, and the hands just fly up," Keating said.