NJ Bullying Law A Drain on Time, Resources

New Jersey's tough new anti-bullying law has been touted as the toughest in the nation--but the school administrators who have to enforce the new law say that it's using up time and resources that could be put to better use, an article posted at NorthJersey.com on Oct. 10 reported.

Kids will be kids, of course, and part of the daily hurly-burly among youth is teasing. The question of when teasing turns into harassment and bullying can be a tough one; when the harassment targets sexual minorities, religious sensitivities come into the picture, with some people of faith claiming that policies and laws forbidding anti-gay harassment erode their freedom of religious expression.

But the problem of bullying is also quite real, and so are its costs. Last year, media attention to youth suicides around the country that took place against a backdrop of relentless homophobic bullying woke America up to a pervasive and ongoing problem: Gay kids, and straight kids perceived as gay, endure vicious attacks that are psychological as well as physical in nature. Those attacks take place at school, but they also can occur online.

The recent suicide of 14-year-old Jamie Rodemeyer, a Buffalo, NY, area resident, points up the corrosive nature of such bullying. Rodemeyer had made a video for the "It Gets Better" project, in which celebrities and everyday people alike create messages of support for GLBT youths. But Rodemeyer himself was so badly bullied that he took his own life. And the abuse didn't stop there: Shockingly, classmates told Rodemeyer's sister that they were glad he was dead.

Portraits such as this underscore the ugly nature of homophobic bullying. GLBT youth are up to six times more likely than their heterosexual peers to engage in suicidal behavior. Other factors are often involved, authorities say, but bullying can push a young GLBT person over the edge.

New Jersey's law was a response to the suicide of an 18-year-old Rutgers University student name Tyler Clementi, whose roommate is charged with spying on his intimate encounter with another man using a web cam. But though the new law was ushered in with praise from GLBT equality groups, the practicalities of enforcing that law have proven immensely difficult and resource intensive.

The law "seeks to regulate students' behavior on and off campus," reported the article at NorthJersey.com, adding, "the new law has imposed a new set of unfunded mandates."

School administrators struggling to keep up say they just can't do it without taking time and attention from other crucial aspects of running the state's schools.

"I spend all day doing harassment, intimidation and bullying reports," the principle of one high school, Michael McGinley, said to an audience of parents. McGinley estimated an average of 10 - 15 incidents each day that have to be looked into and documented, including follow-up with parents. But only a fraction of those incidents--two or three total--were serious enough to warrant actual disciplinary measures.

Even so, minor infractions can end up on a student's permanent record, as happened when one boy hurled a commonplace, if somewhat vulgar, insult at a friend, calling him a "retard" while in casual conversation. That exchange was treated as an episode of bullying.

"Now it's on his record that he committed an act of HIB [Harassment, Intimidation and Bullying]," said Anthony Orsini, the principal of the middle school where the insult was fired off between friends. "The consequences are real now, potentially. It's possible a college could get access to a disciplinary record.

"I can't say to a parent that it's not possible, and that's a concern," Orsini added. The task of keeping up with reports of so-called harassment and bullying is taxing, he said: "It's unfunded and the amount of time it takes from me working with teachers on instruction and other issues is pretty significant."

"There are a lot of practical problems here," noted the state school administrators association's Richard Bozza. The administrator went on to say that the law constituted "overreaching and bureaucratic to the nth degree."

A lack of support from the state's Dept. of Education and an absence of clear-cut, comprehensive guidelines also complicate the picture.

"As a result, administrators say there are inconsistencies," the article said. "A student calling a friend a name might be normal teenage behavior in one district and bullying in another."

"The DOE has a sample policy, but as far as clear direction regarding procedures, we're not getting that," one administrator, Linda Weber, told the newspaper.

Others were more upbeat, saying that as schools grew accustomed to the new law the bumps would be smoothed out. One high school principal, Jack Hurley, told the newspaper, "I'd like to think that this time will be well spent."

Garden State Equality head Steve Goldstein pointed out that young lives are in the balance.

"Hundreds of schools are taking bullying more seriously than they ever had before," Goldstein told the media. "The law has been revolutionary beyond our wildest dreams."

For some, the only resolution in sight is a day when the students themselves get the message that respectful interaction with peers is the only acceptable form of conduct. However, children and teens, unlike adults, lack life experience and the capacity for adult-level judgment. Such messages may be heard, but not understood.

Even so, one theory is that if children stop seeing and hearing episodes of harassment, over time such bullying will fade from playgrounds, school halls, and social media sites.

Not everyone is convinced. The article mentioned how one mother took her two children out of a school because she was convinced that administrators did little to counter bullying.

"They bury their heads in this district like you wouldn't believe," the mother, Laura Driscoll, claimed. Driscoll told the media that her son suffered harassment at the hands of another boy for three years before she finally put him, and his younger sister too, into another school.

The district's superintendent saw things from a different perspective. "There is no question that we complied with the anti-bullying law," Christopher Onorato told the publication.