New Jersey’s “Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights”

(5:26 p.m.: Comments begin here.)

That’s not a joke. That’s the name of a law recently passed by the New Jersey state legislature and signed into law by Gov. Christie. The New York Times tells us about it:

Propelled by public outcry over the suicide of a Rutgers University freshman, Tyler Clementi, nearly a year ago, it demands that all public schools adopt comprehensive antibullying policies (there are 18 pages of “required components”), increase staff training and adhere to tight deadlines for reporting episodes.

Each school must designate an antibullying specialist to investigate complaints; each district must, in turn, have an antibullying coordinator; and the State Education Department will evaluate every effort, posting grades on its Web site. Superintendents said that educators who failed to comply could lose their licenses.

“I think this has gone well overboard,” Richard G. Bozza, executive director of the New Jersey Association of School Administrators, said. “Now we have to police the community 24 hours a day. Where are the people and the resources to do this?”

Eighteen pages of required components. Policing the community 24 hours a day.

From hurricanes to bullying, what is it about liberal society that makes it go insanely overboard in response to every problem that it chooses to designate as a problem? The best answer remains Samuel Francis’s theory of anarcho-tyranny: liberal society is barred from exercising authority over the things that any society needs to exercise authority over, but, to maintain its own legitimacy, it must demonstrate that it is exercising authority over something. Thus it liberates and normalizes obscenity, promiscuity, homosexuality, body scarification, and it covers up Islamic terrorism and black mob violence; but it furiously suppresses such things as smoking and tough speech among children. The more liberalism undoes whatever remains of natural and traditional order, it must impose an unnatural, politically correct order of its own.

Here’s the article:

August 30, 2011
Bullying Law Puts New Jersey Schools on Spot
By WINNIE HU

Under a new state law in New Jersey, lunch-line bullies in the East Hanover schools can be reported to the police by their classmates this fall through anonymous tips to the Crimestoppers hot line.

In Elizabeth, children, including kindergartners, will spend six class periods learning, among other things, the difference between telling and tattling.

And at North Hunterdon High School, students will be told that there is no such thing as an innocent bystander when it comes to bullying: if they see it, they have a responsibility to try to stop it.

But while many parents and educators welcome the efforts to curb bullying both on campus and online, some superintendents and school board members across New Jersey say the new law, which takes effect Sept. 1, reaches much too far, and complain that they have been given no additional resources to meet its mandates.

The law, known as the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights, is considered the toughest legislation against bullying in the nation. Propelled by public outcry over the suicide of a Rutgers University freshman, Tyler Clementi, nearly a year ago, it demands that all public schools adopt comprehensive antibullying policies (there are 18 pages of “required components”), increase staff training and adhere to tight deadlines for reporting episodes.

Each school must designate an antibullying specialist to investigate complaints; each district must, in turn, have an antibullying coordinator; and the State Education Department will evaluate every effort, posting grades on its Web site. Superintendents said that educators who failed to comply could lose their licenses.

“I think this has gone well overboard,” Richard G. Bozza, executive director of the New Jersey Association of School Administrators, said. “Now we have to police the community 24 hours a day. Where are the people and the resources to do this?”

In most cases, schools are tapping guidance counselors and social workers as the new antibullying specialists, raising questions of whether they have the time or experience to look into every complaint of harassment or intimidation and write the detailed reports required. Some administrators are also worried that making schools legally responsible for bullying on a wider scale will lead to more complaints and open the door to lawsuits from students and parents dissatisfied with the outcome.

But supporters of the law say that schools need to do more as conflicts spread from cafeterias and corridors to social media sites, magnifying the effects and making them much harder to shut down. Mr. Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge after his college roommate secretly used a webcam to capture an intimate encounter between Mr. Clementi and another man and stream it over the Internet, according to the police.

“It’s not the traditional bullying: the big kid in the schoolyard saying, ‘You’re going to do what I say,’ ” Richard Bergacs, an assistant principal at North Hunterdon High, said.

Dr. Bergacs, who investigates half a dozen complaints of bullying each month, said most involved both comments on the Internet and face-to-face confrontations on campus. “It’s gossip, innuendo, rumors—and people getting mad about it,” he said.

This summer, thousands of school employees attended training sessions on the new law; more than 200 districts have snapped up a $1,295 package put together by a consulting firm that includes a 100-page manual and a DVD.

At a three-hour workshop this month, Philip W. Nicastro, vice president of the firm, Strauss Esmay Associates, tried to reassure a group of newly named antibullying specialists and coordinators gathered in a darkened auditorium at Bridgewater-Raritan High School.

“I know many of you came in here saying, ‘Holy cow, I’m going to be dealing with 10 reports a day because everything is bullying,’ ” he told the audience, some of whom laughed nervously.

Afterward, Meg Duffy, a counselor at the Hillside Intermediate School in Bridgewater, acknowledged that the new law was “a little overwhelming.” She said cyberbullying increased at her school last year, with students texting or posting mean messages about classmates.

The law also requires districts to appoint a safety team at each school, made up of teachers, staff members and parents, to review complaints. It orders principals to begin an investigation within one school day of a bullying episode, and superintendents to provide reports to Trenton twice a year detailing all episodes. Statewide, there were 2,846 such reports in 2008-9, the most recent year for which a total was available.

In the East Hanover district, the new partnership with Crimestoppers, a program of the Morris County sheriff’s office, is intended to make reporting easier, but it also ups the ante by involving law enforcement rather than resolving issues in the principal’s office. Crimestoppers will accept anonymous text messages, calls or tips to its Web site, then forward the information to school and local police officials.

The district is also spending $3,000 to expand antibullying training to most of its staff, including substitute teachers, coaches, custodians and cafeteria aides. It is also planning its first Community Night of Respect for students and parents in October.

“We really want to be able to implement this new law and achieve results,” the district’s superintendent, Joseph L. Ricca, said, though he added that the law’s “sheer scope may prove to be a bit unwieldy and may require some practical refinement.”

In Elizabeth, antibullying efforts will start in the classroom, with a series of posters and programs, including role-playing exercises. In one lesson, students will study pictures of children’s faces and talk about the emotions expressed (annoyance, disappointment), while in another, they will practice saying phrases like “I am angry.”

“The whole push is to incorporate the antibullying process into the culture,” Lucila Hernandez, a school psychologist, said. “We’re empowering children to use the term ‘bullying’ and to speak up for themselves and for others.”

Even districts that have long made antibullying programs a priority are preparing to step up their efforts, in response to the greater reporting demands. “This gives a definite timeline,” the Westfield superintendent, Margaret Dolan, said, noting the new one-day requirement. “Before, our rule was you need to do it as quickly as possible.”

But Dr. Dolan cautioned that an unintended consequence of the new law could be that students, or their parents, will find it easier to label minor squabbles bullying than to find ways to work out their differences.

“Kids have to learn to deal with conflict,” she said. “What a shame if they don’t know how to effectively interact with their peers when they have a disagreement.”

- end of initial entry -

Gintas writes:

An ounce of self-control is worth 18 pages of external control. But Liberalism doesn’t want self-control, it wants battalions of lawyers marching to the legislatures and churning out laws. I don’t think they realize what is happening, but it appears that societies without internal self-controls work this way. It’s exactly how things were in the days of Christ, you can see the Pharisees were in this mode. Kuehnelt-Leddihn elaborated this insight in Leftism Revisited. I can’t remember the exact wording, but he painted the life outside of Christianity as like an immobilizing straitjacket of superstitions and taboos.

JC in Houston writes:

It doesn’t surprise me that Christie signed the bill. Despite Ann Coulter’s infatuation with him, the man is no conservative. I found a good summary of his definitely non-conservative actions on this New Jersey website some time ago.

Lydia McGrew writes:

You’re probably already aware of this, but the “anti-bullying” agenda is actually part of the homosexual agenda. The “anti-bullying” legislation is going to target expressions that “bully” people on the basis of the standard “protected classes,” including sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation, and it is this latter that has driven the recent drive for such legislation. This has become especially evident here in Michigan as pro-family groups that watch the homosexual agenda have induced lawmakers to introduce amendments to proposed “anti-bullying” legislation that remove these aspects. Such amendments are always rejected.

I certainly agree with you that it’s absurd for legislators to be writing anti-bullying legislation anyway. Part of the problem arises from the fact that school administrators are made powerless in the first place in the face of student misbehavior, so actual bullying cannot be dealt with in normal ways at the local school level. But actually, this isn’t even about a general bullying problem. It’s another political vehicle for penalizing non-liberal opinions.

I would note, too, that it is the public school leaders who have celebrated homosexuality and encouraged the formation of “GLBT” clubs and the like in the schools. They have encouraged children and teens to declare themselves to be “gay.” Now they are unhappy that other children and young people have begun to insult one another with the accusation of being “gay,” so they are going to try to squash any such behavior or expression by anti-bullying legislation.

James P. writes:

Naturally, one suspects that the “anti-bullying” policies will be used to root out and punish those who disagree with the left’s political agenda. Racists, homophobes, Islamophobes—they’re all bullies! One also suspects that whites will be found disproportionately guilty of “bullying,” and this will, from the standpoint of school administrators, nicely balance out the embarrassing fact that black students are disproportionately guilty of physical violence towards others.

Ron C. writes:

The NYT reports: “Each school must designate an antibullying specialist to investigate complaints; each district must, in turn, have an antibullying coordinator.”

VFR should have the same. I have been bullied and intimidated so many times posting contrarian opinions at VFR by the authoritarian Austerman and his pack of wolves (snarling sycophants). I suggest that VFR nominate a neutral observer as ombudsman, say Mr. Ken Hechtman, to judge posts fairly and impartially. The aggressive coercion practiced by the Very Frightening righteous inhabitants of this site has nearly crushed my confidence in rational debate.

LA replies:

I’m not sure if the commenter is joking or not. I don’t remember receiving a comment from him before.

Iona T. writes:

There you go again, demeaning Ron C. Sure you don’t remember any of his posts. Does a bully know anything about his victim? You probably censor him or throw away his emails. VFR does stand for Very Frightening People.

LA replies:

Thanks for setting me straight.

Perhaps, following New Jersey’s lead and Ron C.’s suggestion, there should also be an Anti-Blogging Bill of Rights.

Kilroy writes:

Is this new law from the same Gov. Christie who had that encounter with Tom Moran in which the Governor declared he’d be for small government?

Ken Hechtman writes:

I’m not touching this one with a ten-foot pole but I will say something about the main topic. This isn’t about “tough speech among children”. This is about something that before Columbine used to kill more people a year than the Vietnam War, mostly by driving them to suicide. And Lydia McGrew is right. A third of those suicides used to be gay kids.

It’s a lot better now than it was, even before this New Jersey bill was passed. I’m skeptical of targeted laws like this. Passing new laws is easy. Enforcing the old all-purpose laws against assault and weapons and making threats is what matters and schools have already been taking that responsibility more seriously in the last ten years.

LA replies:

I had no idea that the much worried-about “bullying” of schoolchildren in recent years was primarily or largely “bullying” of “gay” schoolchildren.

If this is the case, why isn’t the campaign labeled: “Stop the Bullying of Gays!”? Why is it just anti generic bullying? After all, our society is not exactly shy about mounting campaigns explicitly aimed at ending mistreatment of homosexuals. Why is it being so indirect in this case?

September 1

Dean Ericson writes:

Ron C.’s comment is really pretty funny. (Yes, he is joking.)

LA replies:

Yes, I thought he was probably joking, but if you had seen the various hostile e-mails I receive, you’d understand why I couldn’t be sure. Some hostile correspondents have a way of mixing statements that sound like a joke with statements that convey something else.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 31, 2011 10:50 AM | Send