Kids get a lesson against bullying Center for Prevention of Hate Violence presents talk at Pittsfield school

PITTSFIELD – Take the word “words.” Now take the “s” on the end and move it to the front. It becomes “sword.” And that is what words can sometimes do, Warsaw Middle School principal Sandy Nevens said Tuesday – they can cut.

“Words can hurt,” Nevens said as he observed a daylong pupil seminar aimed at reducing bullying, harassment and other hate crimes. “But when students know they are a part of the solution, kids can stop this.”

The workshop was presented by Kate Stern and Blanca Santiago of the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence.

Stern said that Steve Wessler found while he was prosecuting hate crimes for the Maine Attorney General’s Office in the 1990s that there was a pattern to these crimes: They all began with words.

“Wessler founded the center to work with young people to intervene and break that pattern,” she said. “We make this as interactive as possible.”

Stern told the students the story of “John” (a fictional name), a real Maine student who in 1998 was bullied and harassed at a Maine school because he chose not to go to a school dance.

Four other students decided “John” was gay when he skipped the dance, and they began tormenting him. It began with whispered words and developed into shouts of homophobic slurs, pushing, shoving his head in the boys room toilet, and eventually a beating. Eventually one of the boys brought a rope noose to school and tightened it around “John’s” neck until he was unable to breathe.

The final act of hate: One of the boys threatened to bring his father’s gun to school and shoot “John.” The pupils involved were only 12 years old.

What eventually saved “John,” said Stern, was that a classmate chose to act and reported the threat.

“Serious bullying and harassment always begins with words,” Stern said.

Tuesday’s seminar was aimed at teaching the pupils to go back and train other pupils. The 51 participants were students in fifth through eighth grades and all were either members of the Warsaw Civil Rights Team or leaders of class focus groups.

Donna Chale, who is the leader of the Civil Rights Team at Warsaw, said there is no serious problem at the school but it is important to recognize that there is a lot of behavior “under the radar,” such as exclusionary behavior and name-calling. “It may not be violent behavior, but it really is hurtful to kids,” she said.

Most telling was an assessment of their school’s atmosphere by the pupils themselves. More than half said they school was a 3 on a scale of 10, with 10 ranked completely unsafe. They expressed concerns about gossiping and name-calling.

“There are some groups that have tension between them,” one girl remarked.

“Especially in the higher grades, some jokes don’t always feel good,” another said.

“Our school isn’t the worst but there is a lot of pretty bad name-calling,” one added. “I’ve been a victim of that.”

Santiago explained to the pupils that they were going to be leaders at their school and would take tools learned Tuesday to make their school a better place to be.

“Changing the culture of a school is a big job,” she said.

Nevens agreed. “Every kid has had some kind of negative experience with other kids,” he said. Even with tools, some students “are too shy or are afraid of their social power to act. But for the most part, training such as this does awaken a desire to hold people accountable.”

“When this group leaves here,” Stern predicted, “they will know they have each other’s back.”