Conversations on bullying

Bullying has been a so called "trending" topic in the news lately, and it's got our attention here at The Free Press.

Recent news stories that two students in southeastern Minnesota committed suicide in part because of how they were bullied at school created a lot of public interest in the issue.

The news stories motivated people to go to town-hall meetings. A meeting in Mankato a few weeks ago was packed with nearly a hundred people as the statewide bullying task force came to town. The task force had planned to be here before the suicides happened, but those events seemed to draw more people to the meeting.

The Rochester Post-Bulletin held a town-hall meeting Tuesday on the subject prompted by the suicides.

Myself and other Free Press editors and reporters recently met with MSU professor Walter Roberts who was selected by Gov. Dayton to be on the statewide bullying task force because of his expertise in counseling and education and the issue of bullying.

We wanted to get his input on what the newspaper could do to address the issue of bullying in the community.

Several interesting takeaways talking to Roberts, who noted he was not speaking as a spokesman for the task force but simply as an education professional:

Bullying has always been around: It is now exacerbated by a number of societal changes including the expansion of the Internet and social media. Whereas kids could once escape bullying by going home, now it's almost 24/7 as they spend a lot of time on Facebook and other sites.

When you're bullying someone or being mean to someone on Facebook, we can't see their reaction like we might in person. So it's easier to bully online. It's lower risk to the perpetrator.

Roberts looks at bullying as a symptom of a larger societal issue of civility. Kids learn how to treat each other by family influences but also by media influences, newspaper stories, talk radio and any other exposure they have to how people interact.

There's more incivility today all around us and that likely breeds more copying behaviors among kids that result in bullying.

Bullying isn't a school problem, it's a societal problem. Kids just happen to congregate at schools.

More and more the message kids get from society and media is: "someone has to be dominant." That's not good.

Roberts surmises Mankato might be doing better to help prevent bullying, but he isn't sure what is working. It could be a number of things. The goal would be to find what is working and report on that.

Roberts suggests newspapers can 1) Make people aware of the issue, sensitize them to it 2) Get people to accept information for combating it. 3) Get communities to talk about it. 4) Report on what the community is or isn't doing.

Lots of good ideas. We'll be formulating a plan soon to develop some stories and possibly a series of stories and public events.

Stay tuned.