Editor’s Note: Several of the last names and/or first names are not given in this story to protect confidentiality.
Physically bullying you out of your lunch money was old school compared to today’s technology where students face an array of cyberbullying, but both physical and negative online behavior were part of the discussion yesterday in a pilot program providing tools and resources to combat cyberbullying in city high schools.
The AT&T and CUNY Hunter program brought seven Hunter student “Upstander ambassadors” to the Brooklyn High School of the Arts, 345 Dean Street in Boerum Hill to lead a cyberbullying peer-to-peer prevention program.
The ambassadors stressed the importance of being an ‘upstander’ when cyberbullying happens, not a bystander. The program’s goal is to empower students to stand up to negative online behavior and have the courage to interrupt or seek help for themselves and others.
But in the morning session, several teens spoke up in a frank and open discussion on all forms of bullying.
“Some people joke around on social media but some people might take it more personally,” said 9th grader Alicia Samora, on the topic of cyberbullying. “They might not say it out loud. They laugh, but inside they’re like it’s definitely not funny.”
“I’ve had bullies growing up in middle school, you know, I’m a big girl, big person, and it took a toll on my mental,” said 10th grader, Camille, about in-person bullying in schools. “There’s a lot of times I didn’t have the self-esteem to come out as who I am. I am gay. I am a lesbian. It was an ongoing thought of well, she doesn’t like me because so and so said something, then why would anybody else. And [this mentality didn’t change ] until I came to high school and found a community and people like me.”
Statistically speaking teens are more likely to bully people who appear or act differently, or identify as LGBTQIA+, according to an AT & T study.
Alicia, a 10th grader, recounted her experiences with bullying. “When I was in elementary school, like kindergarten, I got picked on a lot. In my school there were like three black kids, the rest were Spanish. And it was because my hair was you know natural, curly, kinky. They had straight hair or soft curls. So they picked on me because I was different.”
Many of the students wanted to properly explicate cyberbullying and bullying, what’s serious and what’s not, and how to approach the situation when it happens.
“I like your guys’ mindset. It’s not just the bandwagon effect. You’re coming at it from different angles in how we define cyberbullying and I just want to applaud you,” said the Hunter Upstander Ambassador leading the presentation.
Brooklyn High School of the Arts Counselor Shenea Hunt, or ‘The Trusted Adult, Ms. Hunt’ as many of the high school students called her, said students are often a lot more responsible than many adults think.
“I think they [students] realize the impact of words, the magnitude of it. There’s a lot of disadvantages to doing the wrong thing. Students started to realize people are losing their lives,” said Hunt.
The school’s Principal Daniel Vecchiano said students starting at the specialty arts school, which was founded by famed singer and Queens native, Tony Bennett, are coming in as the elder middle school students, but quickly learn they are not as old as they thought they were compared to high schoolers, and so they try to be older.
“Even from my superiors there’s a very big push for mental health and I think it’s warranted. They have to mature so quickly nowadays it’s not like when I grew up without social media. There’s more choices and confusion,” said Vecchiano.
Vecchiano says that the program is a creative way to introduce anti-cyberbullying skills to the kids through arts, and arts is what they do.
As such, the 14 teens who participated in the pilot program and who are also majoring in vocal performance, theatre, dance, and arts, performed later yesterday afternoon for the entire 9th and 10th grades at the school.
