Tuesday, May 04, 2010

A Tale Of Two Legislatures


Following two cases of students, Phoebe Price and Carl Walker-Hoover, who committed suicide after being bullied at school, the Massachusetts Legislature unanimously approved a new state law that would crack down on bullying. This new legislation requires all school employees to report any instance of bullying and requires school principals to investigate every report.

Senator Robert O'Leary, introducing his bill in the Senate: "Bullying is not new. Bullying has been with us from time immemorial. But what has changed is that it appears to be more pervasive, more destructive. We're going to send out a message that this kind of behavior is not acceptable and the community needs to deal with it."

Meanwhile, down in Georgia, the state Senate also voted unanimously, in the last hours of their legislative session, to approve an anti-bullying measure that would expand the definition of bullying while requiring schools to develop guidelines tailored to curb bullying in elementary through high schools.

The bullying bill was strongly backed by Georgia Equality, and though it does not specifically address bullying based on sexual orientation or gender identity, lobbyists believe it will help LGBT students, who often face bullying in school.
Republican Congressman Mike Jacobs said he was moved to sponsor the bill by the death of DeKalb County fifth grader Jaheem Herrera, who committed suicide after being relentlessly bullied.

Great news, from up north and down south. Let's hope it spreads to other states that do not have anti-bullying laws.

2 comments:

  1. Always kind of surprised me that it had to go this far. Schools should have always been no bullying zones.

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  2. If schools did their jobs well, that sort of nonsense wouldn't occur. As a parent of two children who were bullied who went to the school repeatedly to make it stop and was turned away saying it was my childs problem and they needed to learn to deal with people "more effectively"

    Ok, yeah sure. But my youngest who was in kindergarden, was teased and bullied about his speech impediment, by a 6th grader! Yes, a 6th grader. And the school thought it was perfectly fine.....And this is why we require laws like this to hold the school peoples feet to the fire to make them stop this sort of action.

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