Phoebe Prince case a 'watershed' in fight against school bullying
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Northwestern District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel speaks at a news conference Monday in
By Stacy Teicher Khadaroo, Staff writer / April 1, 2010
The Phoebe Prince case is shaping up to be this generation’s Columbine moment for school bullying.
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Criminal
charges are being filed against nine
The teens subjected Phoebe, who was a freshman at
Prosecution of such cases is rare, making this a “watershed,” says Elizabeth Englander, director of the
The case should prompt more communities to develop a comprehensive range of preventive measures and consequences – from encouraging bystanders to come forward to training adults how to respond, experts say.
“Today in American schools, these kind of abusive behaviors between teenagers have become so frequent that many adults look upon them now as normal," says Ms. Englander. "Cases like this cause everybody to step back and say, ‘Wait ... Is this something that really has to happen, or is it something we should be correcting?’ ”
Empowering bystanders to speak up
Phoebe was reportedly bullied after relationships with two popular boys. The charges against two boys and seven girls range from statutory rape to criminal harassment to civil rights violations resulting in bodily injury. The teens tormented her for nearly three months, primarily in school, although some of it occurred electronically as well, Ms. Scheibel said.
This case could encourage bystanders to confront those who bully fellow students, because it allows
them to point to an instance where teens have been arrested for harassment. That is important, because bystanders can play a significant
role in bringing about change, says Parry Aftab, executive director of WiredSafety, an online safety nonprofit in
“The more kids who have to face the legal system ... the more likely kids will understand that this has consequences,” she says.
But criminal prosecution for serious cases is not enough, says Stan Davis, a guidance counselor and teacher trainer who runs the website stopbullyingnow.com. There also has to be “day after day, smaller consequences for lower-level behavior,” he says.
He notes that 22 percent of students said peers mistreated them at least twice a month, according to a recent survey of more than 2,000 fifth- through 12th-graders that he and a colleague worked on through the Youth Voice Project. Of those students, more than half (54 percent) percent experienced moderate, severe, or very severe trauma.
Forty-two percent told an adult at school, and 58 percent told an adult at home. Of those, 34 percent said reporting it to the adults made things better.
A role for administrators?
Some school districts are basing prevention programs around research on what works, but too many are not, says Miriam Rollin, national director of Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, a coalition of police chiefs, prosecutors, and violence survivors. She hopes this case will be a wakeup call and lead to better federal funding and better training for adults about how to respond to reports of bullying.
The
A new anti-bullying law is currently working its way through the
• Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
Q&A: What does student loan overhaul mean for
WASHINGTON (AP) — Bigger grants for college students who need them.
Relaxed payment terms for students with loans. More money for community colleges and historically black institutions.
The law
that President Barack Obama signed Tuesday could mean big changes for hard-pressed students and colleges as the government becomes
the primary issuer of student loans. But just whom will that affect and how?
YOUR MONEY: New rules streamline student loans,
eliminate some pitfalls
COLLEGE BLOG: 5,000 students submitted wrong FAFSA
Q: What does the overhaul of student lending do?
A:
Basically, it cuts banks out of the government-backed student loan business. Money for the loans has come either directly from the
government or through private financial institutions, which have collected billions of dollars in federal subsidies to protect against
default.
Under the changes, banks will no longer act as middlemen, and all colleges and universities must switch to the direct
lending program by July 1. Many already have made the switch in anticipation of the new law.
Private lenders can still make student
loans that are not backed by the government, and they will continue to have contracts to service some federal loans. But the new law
represents a significant change in what has been a multibillion-dollar business for the banking industry.
Q: How much money will
the government save?
A: Taxpayers will save $68 billion over the next 11 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Q:
What will Obama do with the money? How will this affect students and their parents?
A: A chunk of the savings will go toward
Pell Grants for college students — to award more grants and to provide larger amounts. Community colleges and institutions with predominantly
minority populations also will receive funding.
Q: Will the changes bring down college costs?
A: Sorry, no. Obama acknowledged
as much before signing the bill when he urged colleges and universities to "do their part" to hold down costs.
Q: OK, what exactly
is happening to Pell Grants?
A: More than $40 billion will go toward the grants, which are targeted toward students from low-
and moderate-income families. Between 2013 and 2017, the maximum award will increase to $5,975 from $5,550. The administration also
expects more than 820,000 additional awards to be made by the 2020-2021 academic year because of the changes.
Some of the money
will address shortfalls in the Pell Grant program that developed because students were qualifying for more and larger grants. More
than 6 million students received such grants in the 2008-09 academic year, an increase of about 50% from a decade earlier, according
to the College Board.
Q: How else will students benefit?
A: Students who have low incomes or meet certain other eligibility
requirements and who take out loans after July 1, 2014, will see their payments limited to 10% of their discretionary income after
graduation. Current law caps payments at 15% of income.
For students who make their loan payments on time, the government will
forgive the balance after 20 years, instead of 25. Public service workers — teachers, nurses, police officers and those in the military
— will see any remaining debt forgiven after just 10 years of repayment.
Q: What's in the new law for community colleges?
Community
colleges, which enroll more than 6 million students and are growing fast, will receive $2 billion over the next four years for a competitive
grant program to provide training and education programs. The grant program was created in the economic stimulus bill enacted last
year, but never funded.
Q: What about funding for institutions that serve mostly minority student bodies?
These colleges
and universities will share $2.55 billion in additional funding over the next decade.
Q: Does anybody lose as a result of the
changes?
A: Banks and other financial institutions. Sallie Mae, the biggest student lender, has about 8,500 employees in the student loan program and has said close to one-third of them may lose their jobs as a result of the overhaul. Sallie Mae still will have contracts to service federal loans.
The Rules About How Parents Should Make Rules
In general, researchers have found that kids understand the need for some rules,
particularly safety rules like not hitting other children. But when it comes to parents dictating what a child should wear or who
they should play with, many kids resist.
The rules in 8-year-old Cameron Slaughter's house are clear: Children must do their
homework when they get home from school; bedtime is 7:30; and stabbing one's brother with a pencil is not permitted.
Though Cameron,
like most 8-year-olds, doesn't always execute these rules perfectly, when pressed, he does say that he appreciates them. They keep
you safe, he explains, so they are good.
But if you linger too long on the topic of rules, you will eventually find that there
are some rules that Cameron doesn't think are fair or worthwhile — rules he thinks it might be OK to disobey. For example, he doesn't
think that it would be OK for his mother to regulate his personal relationships — the kids he likes and spends time with. "I can pick
my own friends," he says with a nod.
According to Larry Nucci, a research psychologist at the
Kids Pick And Choose Which Rules To Obey
"Kids
don't just resist parents across the board," Nucci says. "It isn't the situation where kids are just driven by their impulses, and
they simply reject all the rules that parents have."
Instead, Nucci argues, rules can be broken down into four distinct categories.
A
portrait of Cameron Slaughter
Courtesy of the Slaughter family
Even though Cameron doesn't always follow the rules perfectly,
he says he understands why rules are important for safety.
There are moral rules: Don't hit, do share. There are safety rules:
Don't cross the street alone, don't run with scissors. There are rules of social convention: You must say "sir" and "madam."
"And
then there is this fourth category, which has to do with what children consider to be their own business and that they consider to
be private," says Nucci. "Friendships, playmates, who they want to play with, who they want to be around. Some leisure time activities
like what sport they want to do or toys they want to play with. And some ways in which you express yourself through your appearance
— clothing, for example."
And it is this fourth category, Nucci argues, in which the vast majority of conflicts between parents
and children occur.
"Kids don't argue at all with parents — or very little argument with parents — when parents come up with
reasonable safety rules or rules about not stealing from other children or not hitting other kids," says Nucci. "Virtually all of
the conflicts that parents are having with kids are over these personal areas."
Seeking Some Autonomy
In fact, Nucci says
that in observational studies — studies in which researchers go into a home environment and code the interactions between parents
and their children — children seem to resist moral rules only about 10 percent of the time; 70 percent of their resistance is in areas
that they perceive to fall within their personal domain, Nucci says.
Now this is a little tricky, because it turns out that children
and parents don't always see eye to eye about what constitutes personal business.
Nucci offers the example of bathing.
"The
kids see it as: 'It's my body, it's my life, I'm happy how I am, I don't want to take a bath.' And mom is saying, 'No, it's unhealthy,
and you're smelly, and you need to take a bath,' " he says.
"What the kid is doing is arguing for an area of discretion and autonomy.
And the mother is arguing, 'No, this is part of the general conventions of the family.' "
Nucci says researchers have found that
these kinds of conflicts over control of personal domain take place in every culture. And, in fact, Nucci believes that it's important
for parents to respect a child's personal domain, because it's ultimately important to psychological well-being.
"What we find
is that it's tied into requirements that people have for a sense of self and psychological integrity," he says.
Nucci points
to cross-cultural studies of adolescents: "We know that when parents over-intrude, when they start controlling things that are really,
truly personal — like keeping your diary private and [other] aspects of your self-expression — that kids even in rural China self-report
depression."
Control Vs. Perception Of Control
But the idea that parents shouldn't intrude with rules regarding certain
areas of children's lives isn't universally shared by child psychologists.
"It's not what you shouldn't intervene on — it's all
about the how," says Alan Kazdin, director of the
Kazdin doesn't believe that there are just spheres of
life where children must have autonomy. He says that if parents are looking for compliance, the primary thing is to frame rules properly
and not approach children in an authoritarian mode, because that tends to set off oppositional behavior.
"When you want a child
to do something, no matter what the rule domain, what the research shows is that it's the tone of voice in the making of your request,
and whether you include choice in there," says Kazdin.
"So if you say to your 4-year-old child, 'We're going outside! Put on
your red coat! It's cold out!' You gave the child an ultimatum kind of thinking that is likely to lead to oppositional behavior,"
he says.
"If you say the same thing: 'We're going to go outside. Please put on your red coat or green jacket.' That presentation
greatly increases the likelihood of compliance in any child."
One basic difference between these two approaches is this: Nucci
will argue that it's important for children to actually have control over a part of their lives, while Kazdin says that it's only
important for them to have the perception of control.
That's true not just for children, he says, but for all people. Parents included.
College Preparation Timeline
Freshmen
It’s never too early to plan for the future!
Overall
> Build strong academic, language, mathematics and critical thinking skills by taking challenging courses.
> Study hard and get excellent grades.
> Strengthen your vocabulary by increasing your reading.
> Become involved in co-curricular activities.
> Meet your high school guidance counselor and discuss your plans for the next four years.
> Browse through college literature or surf the Web to get an idea of what kinds of schools may be of interest to you.
> Check out what high school courses colleges require.
> Know NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) requirements if you want to play sports in college.
> Keep an academic portfolio and co-curricular record.
> Research career possibilities.
> Begin saving money for college.
Sophomores
Overall
Concentrate on academic preparation and continue to develop basic skills and co-curricular interests.
April
> Register for June SAT Subject Test. These are one-hour exams testing you on academic subjects that you have already completed. Among the many to choose from are biology, chemistry, foreign languages and physics. Many colleges require or recommend one or more of the SAT Subject Tests for admission or placement. You can take SAT Subject Tests when you have successfully completed the corresponding course in high school study (B+ average or better). Talk to your teachers and counselor about which tests to take.
> See your guidance counselor for advice.
> Continue to research career options and consider possible college majors that will help you achieve your career goals.
Juniors
Overall
Begin college selection process. Attend college fairs, financial aid seminars, general information sessions, etc., to learn as much as you can about the college application process. Make sure you are meeting NCAA requirements if you want to play Division I or II sports in college.
April
> When selecting your senior courses, be sure to continue to challenge yourself academically.
> Register for the May/June SAT Reasoning Test and/or the May/June SAT Subject Tests. Not all SAT Subject Tests are given on every test date. Check the calendar carefully to determine when the Subject Tests you want are offered. Register for the June ACT if you want to take that test.
> Continue to evaluate your list of colleges and universities. Eliminate colleges from the original list that no longer interest you and add others as appropriate.
> Look into summer jobs or apply for special summer academic or enrichment programs. Colleges love to see students using their knowledge and developing their skills and interests.
Seniors
Overall
Apply to colleges. Make decisions. Finish high school with pride in yourself and your accomplishments.
April
> Do not take rolling admission applications for granted. (Some colleges do not have application deadlines; they admit students on a continuous basis.) These schools may reach their maximum class size quickly-the earlier you apply, the more availability there may be.
> Review your college acceptances and financial aid awards. Be sure to compare financial aid packages in your decision-making process.
> If you are positive you will not enroll at one or more of the colleges which accepted you, please notify those colleges that you have selected another college. Keeping colleges abreast of your plans might enable those colleges to admit someone else.
> If you know which college you will attend, send your tuition deposit and follow all other instructions for admitted students. You must decide which offer of admission to accept by May 1 (postmark date).
