Use Your Words

Harassing, intimidating, and menacing behaviors have the potential to make being in school a nightmare for anyone experiencing such a horrendous environment. The unfortunate reality is that physical assault typically accompanies harassing, intimidating, and menacing conduct.

I presided over hundreds of disciplinary hearings. There were multiple incidences where the disciplinary referral would indicate the actions of two or more students. The personnel responsible for writing the disciplinary referral would frequently use the term bully as a shorthand method for describing the incident. In each scenario where the term bully was utilized, I would have to investigate what the term meant in that situation.

One of my first initiatives was to stop the use of all forms of the word bully regarding all discipline scenarios that dealt with harassment, intimidation, assault, or menacing behaviors. The word bully has been utilized to describe behaviors (face to face/cyber interactions) including but not limited to teasing, name calling, shoving, intimidation, horseplay, etc. All documents pertaining to a hearing must state exactly what occurred; no short cuts or general statements should be utilized.

An example: “Student A called Student B a name and hit him in the shoulder.” In this scenario Student A is not currently exhibiting any bullying behaviors. He is harassing Student B and physically assaulting him.

Using precise words to describe exactly what happened in any given scenario helps the investigation, empowers the individual targeted and holds the perpetrator to their actions. Most importantly it does not allow the perpetrator to hide behind the ambiguity of the term bully.