Bullying Prevention

Bullying is an unwanted, aggressive behavior that involves a real or perceived imbalance of power between individuals with the intent to cause emotional or physical harm. Bullying can be physical, verbal, or social/relational and involves repetition or potential repetition of a deliberate act. Students who are the targets of bullying behavior and those who exhibit bullying behavior toward others may suffer serious, lasting consequences. In order to be considered bullying, the behavior must include:

• A Deliberate Act: To cause emotional or physical harm to another individual.
• An Imbalance of Power: Those who bully use their power—such as physical strength, access to embarrassing information, or popularity—to control or harm others. Power imbalances can change over time and vary in different situations, even if they involve the same people.
• Repetition: Bullying behaviors that display more than one time or have the potential to happen more than once.

Conflict typically occurs when two or more students of equal power disagree. Conflict becomes bullying when one of the students intimidates or dominates the other student through bullying behaviors to resolve the conflict.

Cyberbullying includes the electronic creation or transmission of harassing communications, direct threats, or other harmful texts, sounds, or images,  which may be shared, sent, or posted publicly. Cyberbullying may include, but is not limited to, personal or private information that causes humiliation, false or negative information to discredit or disparage, or threats of physical harm. Cyberbullying also includes breaking into another person's electronic account or assuming that person's online identity in order to damage that person's reputation.

Social Media Bullying can take many forms, such as sending mean messages to people or threats to a person's life, aggressive or rude texts, posts, or messages. It can also be stealing a person's account information to publicize private information by spreading it on social media websites. Possible forums for social media bullying:

• Internet websites with free registration and ease of registration
• Internet websites offering peer-to-peer instant messaging
• Internet websites offering comment forums or sections
• Internet websites offering image or video posting platforms