On April 21, Montana Governor Steve Bullock signed his state’s anti-bullying law, eliminating the title his state has held for the last few years as the only state without one. The law, which is nothing more than a statement. Aug-October have been busy! Another National Anti-bullying Summit in D.C. Almost another 5-6,000 students across the state. Forsythe MS ( Ann Arbor), White Pine MS ( Saginaw), Laingsburg Schools (1-12) Additional Conferences. An overview of anti bullying campaigns. On April 20, 1999, two boys at Columbine High School in Colorado went on a shooting spree and killed twelve students and themselves. Because these boys were victims of bullying, all kinds of academic studies resulting in all. Columbine High School Massacre . In addition to the shootings, the complex and highly planned attack involved a fire bomb to divert firefighters, propane tanks converted to bombs placed in the cafeteria, 9. The perpetrators, two senior students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered a total of 1. They injured 2. 1 additional people, with three others being injured while attempting to escape the school. The pair then committed suicide in the school library. The attack has been referred to by USA Today as a . Highly influential, it is noted as one of the first and most serious of a series of high profile spree shootings which have occurred ever since. Much discussion also centered on the nature of high school cliques, subcultures and bullying, in addition to the influence of violent movies and video games in American society. The shooting resulted in an increased emphasis on school security, and a moral panic aimed at goth culture, social outcasts, gun culture, the use of pharmaceutical anti- depressants by teenagers, teenage Internet use and violent video games. During the summer that same year, the school underwent a $1. Harris initially created the site to host gaming levels of the video game Doom, which he and his friend, Dylan Klebold, had created, primarily for friends. On this site, Harris began a blog, which included jokes and short journal entries with thoughts on parents, school, and friends. By the end of the year, the site contained instructions on how to cause mischief, as well as instructions on how to make explosives, and blogs in which he described the trouble he and Klebold were causing. Beginning in early 1. Harris's ever- growing anger against society. Harris's site attracted few visitors, and caused no concern until late 1. Brown's mother had filed numerous complaints with the Jefferson County Sheriff's office concerning Harris, as she thought he was dangerous. The website contained numerous death threats directed against Brown: Klebold knew that if Brooks accessed the address, he would discover the content and inform his parents, and likely the authorities would be notified. After Brown's parents viewed the site, they contacted the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. The investigator Michael Guerra was told about the website. When he accessed it, Guerra discovered numerous violent threats directed against the students and teachers of Columbine High School. Other material included blurbs which Harris had written about his general hatred of society, and his desire to kill those who annoyed him. Harris had noted on his site that he had made pipe bombs. In addition, he mentioned a gun count and compiled a hit list of individuals (he did not post any plan on how he intended to attack targets). As Harris had posted on his website that he possessed explosives, Guerra wrote a draft affidavit, requesting a search warrant of the Harris household. The affidavit was concealed by the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office and not revealed until September 2. TV show 6. 0 Minutes. The investigation revealed that high- ranking county officials had met a few days after the massacre to discuss the release of the affidavit to the public. It was decided that because the affidavit's contents lacked the necessary probable cause to have supported the issuance of a search warrant for the Harris household by a judge, it would be best not to disclose the affidavit's existence at an upcoming press conference, although the actual conversations and points of discussion were never revealed to anyone other than the Grand Jury members. Following the press conference, the original Guerra documents disappeared. In September 1. 99.
Jefferson County investigator failed to find the documents during a secret search of the county's computer system. A second attempt in late 2. The Columbine High School massacre was a school shooting that occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, an unincorporated area of Jefferson County in the American state of Colorado. Jefferson County archives. The documents were reconstructed and released to the public in September 2. The final grand jury investigation was released in September 2. The judge sentenced the duo to attend a juvenile diversion program. There both boys attended mandated classes and talked with diversion officers. One of their classes taught anger management. Harris also began attending therapy classes with a psychologist. Klebold had a history of drinking and having failed a dilute urine test, but neither he nor Harris attended any substance abuse classes. Shortly after Harris' and Klebold's court hearing, Harris's online blog disappeared. His website was reverted to its original purpose of posting user- created levels of Doom. Harris began to write a rage- filled paper journal, in which he recorded his thoughts and plans. In April 1. 99. 8, as part of his diversion program, Harris wrote a letter of apology to the owner of the van. However, around the same time, he furiously derided him in journal, stating that he believed to have the right to steal something if he wanted to. Harris continued scheduled meetings with his psychologist until a few months before he and Klebold committed the Columbine High School massacre. After the website was made public, AOL permanently deleted it from its servers and it was preserved for the FBI. Harris, however, did not attend prom because he failed to find a date to bring to prom and he spent the night at a friend's house. As a result, he was prescribed the anti- depressant Zoloft. He complained of feeling restless and having trouble concentrating; in April, his doctor switched him to Luvox, a similar anti- depressant drug. The pair documented their arsenal with video tapes they kept secret. Their entries contained blurbs about ways to escape to Mexico, hijacking an aircraft at Denver International Airport and crashing into a building in New York City, as well as details about the planned attack. The pair hoped that, after setting off home- made explosives in the cafeteria at the busiest time of day, killing hundreds of students, they would shoot survivors fleeing from the school. Then, as police vehicles, ambulances, fire trucks, and reporters came to the school, bombs set in the boys' cars would detonate, killing these emergency and other personnel. In the event, the explosives in their cars did not detonate (safe for one explosion that triggered hours after the massacre). Both students portray two characters in black trenchcoats and wear round sunglasses who help the nerds by . The guns shown in the film are props. One scene shows Harris and Klebold shouting rants at the camera telling them to leave the kids alone or they will kill them, displaying the aggressive behaviour they would use in the shooting. In general, the film foreshadows what would become the Columbine High School Massacre. They revealed the ways they hid their arsenals in their homes, as well as how they deceived their parents about their activities. The pair shot videos of doing target practice in nearby foothills, as well as areas of the high school they planned to attack. On April 2. 0, approximately thirty minutes before the attack, they made a final video saying goodbye and apologizing to their friends and families. Dignity Act Certification Course; Dignity Act CoSer; The Dignity for All Students Act. The Dignity for All Students Act first took effect in July 2012. Its purpose is to build positive school climate by reducing the incidence.Set to explode at 1. Harris and Klebold arrived in their vehicles separately at Columbine High School. Harris parked his vehicle (a Honda Prelude) in the Junior student parking lot, by the south entrance, and Klebold parked his vehicle (a BMW) in the adjoining Senior student parking lot, by the west entrance. The school cafeteria, their bomb target, with its long outside window- wall and ground- level doors, was between their parking spots. The youths placed the duffel bags containing the bombs—set to explode at approximately 1. Had the bombs exploded with full power, they would have killed or severely wounded all 4. Their ultimate hope had been to continue the massacre in neighboring homes, then to hijack a plane. The grand finale was to crash the plane into New York City (creating an unrelated connection to 9/1. Only a long trail of death and destruction would have satisfied Harris' and Klebold's need for revenge for the perceived wrongs done to them. Gardner usually ate lunch with students in the cafeteria, but on April 2. Smokers' Pit in Clement Park. The security staff at Columbine did not observe the bombs being placed in the cafeteria, since a custodian was replacing the school security video tape as it happened (at 1. The bags holding the bombs were first visible on the fresh security tape when it resumed recording at 1. No witness recalled seeing the duffel bags being added to the 4. Brown was surprised to see Harris; whom he had earlier noted had been absent from an important class test. Harris seemed unconcerned when reminded of this fact, commenting, . Several minutes later, students departing Columbine for their lunch break observed Brown heading down South Pierce Street away from the school. Meanwhile, Harris and Klebold armed themselves by their vehicles and waited for the bombs to explode. Both armed, they climbed to the top of the outdoor West Entrance steps, placing them on a level with the athletic fields west of the building and the library inside the West Entrance, directly above the cafeteria. From this vantage point, the cafeteria's west entrance was located at the bottom of the staircase, next to the Senior parking lot. Rachel Scott was hit four times by Harris and killed instantly. Richard Castaldo was shot eight times in the chest, arm and abdomen and paralyzed below the chest. One such rumor related to the murder of Rachel Scott claimed that the shooters had first asked Scott if she believed in God, and killed her after she said yes. The FBI later concluded that this interaction did not take place. The three friends had been ascending the staircase directly below the shooters. Kirklin later reported seeing Klebold and Harris standing at the top of the staircase, before opening fire. At first they thought they were carrying paintball guns. All three youths were shot and wounded. Focusing on Individual and School Environmental/Security Factors. Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Texas at Arlington, P. O. Box 1. 95. 95, Arlington, TX 7. USA2. Illinois State University, USA3. University of Texas at San Antonio, USA4. Texas A& M International University, USACopyright . This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Bullying behavior continues to be a salient social and health- related issue of importance to educators, criminal justice practitioners, and academicians across the country. While discourse on school bullying is abundant, previous studies are limited in explaining the predictive effect of factors such as individual/demographic variables, school environmental variables, and school antibullying preventive measures. Using a nationally representative sample of 1. United States, the current study examines school safety measures and students’ perceptions about school environments (or climate), especially school rules and punishment. Findings reveal that the variables of security guards, fairness and awareness of school rules, gangs and guns at school, students misbehaving, and teachers’ punishment of students were statistically significant predictors of bullying victimization. Implications of these findings for school anti- bullying programs as well as directions for future research are discussed. Introduction. In recent decades, school bullying and victimization, which continues to be a serious social and health problem in the United States, has received extraordinary levels of attention from the public, criminal justice practitioners, academicians, and educators . A significant number of empirical studies indicate that bullying and victimization is an increasing problem on school grounds and one that has negative consequences for both bullies and their victims . For example, the School Crime Supplement survey (2. Recently, Dinkes et al. Limited empirical studies . Yet these studies found that individual demographic factors (e. For example, a study by De. Voe et al. First, the majority of prior research has focused on bullies, types of bullying, and related prevention/intervention strategies. Second, many studies have focused on physically aggressive bullying and victimization while ignoring psychologically/emotionally aggressive victimization, despite the fact that many children are known to be bullied not only physically, but also psychologically/emotionally . Third, while schools have attempted to create safer environments by implementing a variety of preventive strategies and programs, such as the use of school security technologies (e. The current study, using a nationally representative sample of adolescents in the United States, takes a more holistic approach and addresses these limitations. Primarily, the focus of the current study is to determine whether various school safety strategies, the school environment, and individual social demographic factors are significantly related to each of the school bullying victimization categories. It is hypothesized that students who attend schools where there is a heightened safety outlook (including school safety strategies for a more safe and protective school environment/climate) will have less incidents of victimization than schools that do not have such an environment. Additionally, this study will examine three different categories of school bullying victimization (physical, psychological, and both physical and psychological bullying victimization) in an effort to help schools develop more strategic plans for reducing bullying and victimization. School Bullying Victimization and Negative Consequences. According to Olweus . More often, bullying includes repeated incidents of harm, is generally characterized by an imbalance of power and/or an asymmetrical relationship among students . Victimization (being bullied) of school bullying is therefore defined as repeated exposure to physical and emotional harm from more powerful students on campus . For example, a study by Silvernail et al. More recently, the 2. Youth Risk Behavior Survey indicated that approximately 8 percent of adolescents (aged 1. Overall, the results consistently report that our children are victimized by other students on school ground. For example, victims of school bullying are more likely to suffer serious mental health disorders, such as depression, anxiety, loneliness, and unhappiness, and are at greater risk for committing suicide . In addition, bullied victims are more likely to experience relational problems with their school peers, to be rejected by their peers, to dislike school, and to have lower grades . These findings clearly show that victimization of school bullying is serious problem that requires changes to school environments in order to improve safety among students. Predictors of School Bullying Victimization Although any student can be a victim of school bullying, there are consistent characteristics of victims. Several empirical studies have found that individual demographic characteristics (e. For example, Graham and colleagues . Age and grade level have also been found to be significant predictors of being victimized . A study by Whitney and Smith . Regarding the relationship between race and school bullying victimization, the findings are mixed. A study by Seals and Young . Prior empirical studies also indicate that negative interactions with parents and a home environment where domestic violence is present are significantly related to school victimization. Youths who have been rejected by parents and/or exposed to a harsh home environment, such as hostility and violence among family members, are more likely to be victims of school bullying . In addition to individual- related characteristics, lifestyle and opportunity influence bullying victimization. Adolescents who are more exposed to opportunities to engage in risky behavior (e. In contrast, adolescents attending schools where teachers paid attention to bullying and intervened in or stopped bullying problems were less likely to be victimized . Also, research shows a significant relationship between school safety/adult supervision and bullying victimization at school . These studies found that students were less likely to be victimized when schools increased staff supervision of student activities in hallways and in the cafeteria. Additionally, students attending schools in which teachers were aware of school policies on bullying and in which school professionals handled victimization problems adequately tended to be victimized less often . In contrast, lower levels of involvement by teachers in the establishment and enforcement of policies on aggressive student behavior were associated with higher rates of bullying and victimization . The researchers predicted that better discipline management (i. Results from another study on the effects of school level security and related issues on the degree of school bullying victimization have been mixed. However, they found that students at schools with locker checks and corporal punishment policies experienced less victimization. Theory of School Climate and School Bullying Victimization A few studies have focused on the role that the school climate, including school characteristics, plays in bullying victimization; most studies, however, overlook the ecological dimension of school bullying and victimization although framing school violence within this model is perhaps the most cogent approach. Extrapolating from his theory, a few researchers have proposed mechanisms of bullying victimization by employing an ecological model whereby adolescent development is influenced by both their proximal environment and other environmental contexts including fluid interactions with parents, peers, teachers, and the school climate . Bullying victimization can thus be best understood within this framework. The microsystem involves interactions with the individual’s immediate or proximal environment. The microsystem includes patterns of activities, roles, and interpersonal relationships. Families are generally the first microsystem within which adolescents function . For instance, parents may have the closest and the greatest influence on an adolescents’ behavior. The second ecological system is the mesosystem, which refers to interrelations of two or more elements within the microsystem. Harmonious relationships between parent and peers or parents and school may influence an adolescent’s behavior. Thirdly, the exosystem is defined as a “system that is not in direct interaction with the developing person but has indirect effects on the person” . For instance, parents in poor neighborhoods may face greater obstacles in taking proper care of their children. If there is a lack of resources in such neighborhoods, the relationship between lack of parental support and lack of community resources may not directly affect an adolescent’s behavior, but indirectly affect it. The last system is identified as the macrosystem, which includes influences by one’s culture, norms, and laws of society . Rather, it provides many possible explanations, such as various interactions between parent, peer, school, and/or community factors from all of these ecological sources. It does, however, provide the best theoretical framework for studies on bullying victimization because it describes fluid and reciprocal interactions between peers, some of which negatively impact those in asymmetrical power relationships on campus. Research Questions and Hypotheses. In sum, we believe that further research is necessary to better understand the etiology of bullying victimization, especially focusing on the effects of school prevention/intervention strategies and school environments on victimization.
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