Palm Springs Unified School District school board member Shari Stewart told a group of students at the Tolerance Education Center (TEC) Monday morning Dec. 6, 2010 that it was "enlightening and really opened up my eyes" after hearing 90 minutes of PSUSD students talk about their experiences of bullying in and out of school.
Fellow board member Justin Blake called the event "groundbreaking" and "something that will change society.”
The event was a symposium for tolerance, empathy and compassion sponsored by the Palm Springs Unified School District, the TEC, and the Digital Arts Technology Academy of Cathedral City High School.
The premise was simple: gather student leaders from the four district high schools to talk about bullying and to take steps to empower other students to stand up and say, “Bullying needs to end. And we’re going to end it.”
I’ve been a high school teacher in California for 22 years, the last 10 at Cathedral City High School. I had no idea bullying was such a deep and insidious problem. In preparation for the symposium, I conducted two hours of interviews with students from Mt. San Jacinto and Cathedral City High School about bullying.
There was the story of a CCHS sophomore girl who had her lunch punched to mulch every day in elementary school, and she went hungry. There is still pain in her face when she recalls those times, many years ago.
There was the girl at Mt. San Jacinto whose brother was kicked in the stomach and thrown in a trash can by his relatives. “Family shouldn’t do that to family,” she said, as her voice faded away in indignation.
There was the student who stood up for “the nerd” and got suspended and placed on probation. And then there was the bully himself, who, when finally confronted by his victim, eventually relented and became, instead, a friend.
And finally there was my student, someone I see everyday in English Class and later in the day in digital storytelling Class, who stood up Monday morning, among a theater full of her peers, and, through tears and a choking voice, told her story:
“Hi everybody. My name is Marisa Smith and I go to Cathedral City High School. And I've never really had any bullying done to me, but something happened to my sister a couple weeks ago.
“She was being pushed in the P.E. lockers and called names, and it made me really mad because it was two girls that were doing this to her. It wasn’t just one girl.
“And what made me even madder was that nobody said anything, and you guys all know how crowded the lockers get.
“Not one person did anything for her, and it just makes me mad that that’s how kids are. You know nobody will stand up and say anything because it’s just one person. If it’s everybody, those kids are gonna step down.”
The tables were turned Monday at the symposium--on purpose. Adults were there to listen to students, students who shared their stories and talked in calm and measured voices about their hurt and outrage.
One of the most strident voices was Kendra Ongalibang, a senior at Desert Hot Springs, whom my colleague David Vogel calls “the next Oprah,” for her intelligence and her passion and her charisma.
On her own volition, Kendra has started an anti-bullying campaign that she takes to the middle schools. It is such a game-changer that at the end of the presentation, she has bullies standing up and apologizing to their classmates. After the symposium, Kendra shared her expertise with other student leaders in the hallway of the TEC, sowing the seeds of change.
Kendra makes us all accountable for bullying; in this case, you really are part of the problem if you are not part of the solution. We’re all those kids in the locker room, standing there, watching someone be bullied. But we don’t have to be.
If we are decisive and determined and shoulder to shoulder, we can make them step down.
-Matt Hamilton
