districts are eligible to apply for youth programs. if you want to find out more about our programs, can you go to our website. www.ovw.usdoj.gov. www.ovw.usdoj.gov. and to the left there is grant programs and then you can view descriptions of all the programs. and we have i think for our youth programs that's about anywhere between a $10 million, $15 million program and we disperse funds each year. so, you know, check us out. all right. thank you.

>> if everyone can give another round of applause for darlene johnson. apologize for the technical difficulties and thank you for rolling it with and going ahead and starting. i appreciate it. i just want to make sure that i give her a proper introduction. darlene currently serves as the associate director in the office of violence against women. in this capacity, she supports the director and managing the community engagement division and implementing grant programs that respond to violence against women. so thank you. now we're going to hear from elizabeth allen. dr. allen is professor of graduate studies and higher education at the university of maine and director of stop hazing consulting. dr. allen was principal investigator for the national study of student hazing and is currently directing the hazing prevention consortium.

so let's give her a round of applause. >> thank you. can everyone hear me okay? great. it's great to be here. thanks so much for choosing to come to this session today. thank you also to sarah and her colleagues at the u.s. department of education and partnering agencies who worked hard to organize this wonderful summit. it's been a great day so far. wouldn't you agree? i appreciate you providing me the opportunity to be here. as you know, i'm here today to talk with you about hazing. and i'd like to begin by asking you what comes to mind when you think of that word? >> college. fraternities. initiation.

>> okay. all right. so it didn't take long for some images to pop into your head. and, thank you. and you're like many others who think about some common images as they relate to hazing. and one is young men in college fraternities, beating each other, passing out or even dying tragically from alcohol poisoning because of hazing. also people think about professional athletes like last year's headlines of the rookie jonathan martin of the miami dolphins and more recently people think sometimes about marching bands with the tragic death of drum major robert champion down at florida a & m university. and now more recently over the past month we've heard news of a

sexually harassing culture and hazing in the ohio state university's marching band prompting them to fire the band director. while these images and headlines reflect realities of hazing, they only paint a partial picture. so what is missing? for one thing, the images rarely portray the extent and range in which hazing occurs. now it's probably difficult to see on the left hand side, i'll let you know, certainly hazing does occur in varsity athletics and in greek life or fraternities and sororities as the headlines and images suggest, but according to our research of college students and this -- these are results from the national study that i was a principal investigator for.

we surveyed more than 10,000 college students at 53 different colleges and universities across the united states. and as can you see, the figures confirm that hazing occurs in a range of different clubs and organizations and activities including intermural sports, club sports, service organizations and even academic clubs and honor societies. so the predominant images of hazing and sports and fraternities and marching bands, while they're real, they don't capture the fuel extent to which hazing is occurring across many kinds of groups and organizations. and the predominant images rarely reflect the realities of hazing for middle and high school students. where our research indicates that nearly half or 47% of students report experience hazing in high school.

in addition to these statistics, headlines provide a glimpse of hazing in schools, hazing that includes humiliating, degrading, often dangerous and illegal activities. let's look at the formal definition of hazing. hazing is any activity expected of someone seeking membership in a group that humiliates, degrades, abuses or endangers them regardless of a person's willingness to participate. so breaking it down, you see there are three key components to defining hazing. first, it's behavior that occurs for the purpose of membership or trying to maintain one's membership in an established group, organization, or team. second, it involves behavior that risks emotional or physical harm. and third, it can occur

regardless of a person's willingness to participate. and it's that third part of the definition that is often a sticking point, especially for students who assume it can't possibly be hazing if someone agreed to do it or appeared to just go along with it willingly. while it may seem counterintuitive by definition, hazing can and does occur even if a person goes along with it. so why is this clause included in statutes and policies related to hazing? well, there are several key ingredients that explain the need for that particular clause. and those include first the strong desire to block to a group, a human need we all have, and combined with intense peer pressure that is associated with that group context of hazing. and you know peer pressure can be both explicit like come on,

come on, just do it, it's a tradition, or it can be implicit where youth go along with something to prove themselves worthy of membership or to avoid the possibility that their peers might think less of them or consider them a weak link among the group. so taken together these dynamics can create a coercive environment, so that strong desire and need to belong, peer pressure, contributes to creating a coercive environment. and since coercion can impair judgment, it can impede a true consent. so what does hazing look like for middle and high school students? imagine a young person who has been playing a sport throughout childhood. it's his or her dream to make the varsity team. they give it their best effort in tryouts. they earn a place on that high school varsity roster. they attend several practices where the rookies are asked to

carry the water bottles and the team equipment and so they do because that's what it's been done before and everybody sort of earned their way. and then they go on the bus to several scrimmages and the veterans tell them, well, the rookies have to sit in the front of the bus and the rookies also have to clean the bus after the veterans depart if there's litter or trash left over, et cetera. and the coach doesn't really say anything or doesn't seem to notice. and so the rookies follow suit. it just seems like the norm. so you can see how the stage begins to be set with taken for granted hierarchies and status differentials that appear to be accepted as the norm. then a teen team party is planned for the weekend. when the rookies arrive, they are told it's initiation night, a tradition passed down from year to year. all the veterans have gone through it and it's fun. not exactly -- not knowing

exactly what's in store, the rookies assume the teammates -- you know, take the teammates' word for it, it's all in good fun. so what happens next? well, the story unfolds in a number of different ways. in california -- and these are based on real incidents. in california, incoming freshmen were unexpectedly driven to an unknown location by seniors, covered in cat food, various sticky substances, and rolled in the sand. in mississippi, veteran members of the cheerleading team forced new members to wear diapers while veterans threw food at them. in illinois, rookies on the girl's soccer teams with bound up with plastic wrap while teammates smeared their faces with makeup and whipped cream. in florida, new band members were called into a dark hallway while veteran band members threw drumstick and mallets at them. massachusetts, teammates were expected to drink their teammate

urine. in indiana, rookies were beaten with a metal pole in the locker room. they were beaten with bats to the point of drawing blood. massachusetts, new york, new mexico and numerous other states, rookies have been sexually assaulted with broom sticks or baseball bats or other instruments. these are a myriad of recent examples. it cuts across a range of different groups not limited to just athletics but including performing arts groups, class hazing, rotc, and other kinds of clubs and organizations. some of these examples might sound strikingly similar to bullying, which prompts the obvious question -- are hazing and bullying the same? is hazing a type of group bullying? while there are a number of similarities between the two, there are some important nuances that distinguish them. one of the more obvious is that

hazing occurs for the express purpose of inclusion, while children who bully are typically seeking to exclude and marginalize at child. in some cases, incidents of hazing can meet the criteria of bullying. for example, they can be explicitly aggressive. they can intend to cause harm. they can be a pattern. and for those cases, we might call them a type of group bullying. for example, in fraternity pledging, it can involve aggressive behavior like kidnapping, paddling, beatings, lineups where pledges are screamed at, cursed at, yelled at. and all these activities can occur over a period of weeks culminating in what is often referred to as a "hell night" prior to initiation. and in that scenario, it seems that hazing meets the criteria that commonly defines bullying. however, there are many instances of hazing that do not fit squarely within the scope of the bullying criteria.

for example, sometimes it can involve a single incident. sometimes the activities are not necessarily -- don't appear aggressive on the surface like scavenger hunts, skits, requirements to get to know older members. however, frequently they cross the line into hazing when they include expectations for sexual favors, other forms of personal servitude, the performance of sexual simulations and consumption of alcohol and other drugs. so why is it important to understand the comparison between bullying and hazing? well, i've worked with many educators who believe the schools' bullying policy will sufficiently address hazing too. but because the definition of hazing is more expansive, it causes some confusion, and because hazing tends to be associated with inclusion, it will often go unrecognized or be overlooked if the school simply

relies on its bullying policy to cover hazing as well. schools need to be aware of hazing and reck nice when it occurs because kit cause physical and emotional harm and even death. ironically, while students often trait precipitate in hazing to build group unity, hazing undermines those very goals, damaging relationships, breeding mistrust among group members, causing anger, resentment, and leaving lasting physical and emotional scars. and in light of the many problems associated with it, understanding it and preventing it is vital for the health and well-being of our youth. and it's important to recognize that hazing isn't exceptional. it occurs for both boys and girls. it occurs in both public and private schools, in and all regions of the country, and it doesn't appear to be unique to

particular racial identities. research also indicates that the vast majority of students who experienced hazing do not label it as such. so of the 47% of students who experience it in high school only 8% called it hazing. major disconnect. curious about this discrepancy, we explored it further on hundreds of interviews with students. and based on the research so far, we believe the gap is largely due to students' failure to identify hazing except in cases of extreme physical force and abuse. so when you ask students to define hazing, they'll say something like, well, it's forcing someone to do something they don't want to do to be part of a group. when you probe further and say what do you mean forcing someone? what does that look like to you? they'll describe tying someone to a tree or a chair or holing them down or putting them in the trunk of a car, kidnapping, those kinds of physical force. but rarely do they account for the power of coercion.

the power and control that can happen and is so central to hazing. another challenge is that many students will just -- uh-oh. we lost it. where did it go? i'll keep talking now. many students will justify hazing based on the perceived positive intentions of the activity. not there. so you'll often -- it's not uncommon to hear them rationalize by saying things like that wasn't hazing even if the behavior meets the definition of hazing, no, that wasn't hazing. that was just a tradition. that was just an initiation. that was just group bonding. no, no. it wasn't hazing. and as students often justify it based on the perceived gains, sometimes teachers, coaches, and even parents condone it,

creating another major challenge toll erasing hazing. some of our research indicates as many as 25% of coaches and advisors knew about the hazing or even participated in it. so dwif given the harm for hazing and the extent to which it goes unrecognized, what can be done to prevent it? what can you do to make a difference after you leave here today? first, it's important to understand hazing within a larger context. and learn lessons from prevention and other arenas. because as of yet, we don't have an evidence base around hazing prevention. so we are translating from other fields. but one of the lessons we know is we have to consider it within a larger context. it's not a few bad actors out there who are doing this hazing. or anomalous groups. it's about something that's embedded in the culture and

often goes unrecognized or normalized. and it's not an isolated problem. so we need to draw on prevention science and take a comprehensive approach using the ecological model. we can think about how he we might analyze the problem of hazing on multiple levels. many of you are familiar with this. i had a slide but looking at hazing at the individual level, group level, the school level and the larger community level and looking at the factors that contribute to it as well as protect from it, protect, you know, the individuals and groups from participating in hazing. so, for example, at the group level, a contributing factor might be that some students are more likely to engage in hazing if they don't see alternative to promote group bonding. so a protective factor would be to engage students in developing -- and adults and coaches, et cetera -- engage in

develop i developing cool and desirable alternatives for building group unity and achieving something without having to participate in hazing. working to develop and effectively communicate and enhorse an anti-hazing policy could be a protective factor at the school or community level. bottom line, as educator, community members, parents, friends, we all have a role to play. our research has found that a good deal of hazing in high schools occurs in plain view of adults. students talk about hazing and there are many people who know it's happening and see the signs so, there are many bystanders to hazing. so the five step process of bystander intervention is something that we're using to promote hazing prevention efforts. and that's what we can think about here. when we leave here, what are

some things we can do, some concrete things it notice hazing? step number one. two, interpret it as a problem. to help others see the harm associated it with. three, to recognize our responsibility to change it. four, to acquire the skills needed to change it, and five, to take action. toward that end we need to work together to reframe this issue. it's not harmless antics and pranks among willing participates. hazing is abusive and undermines the kind of school climate we need for our children to thrive. it's a community issue. hazing has ripple effects beyond the school walls. if you think about it, these co-curricular activities where hazing is occurring, they're the leadership laboratories for our future leaders. and so much of what they're learning, you know, they're learning about how to be a

leader, how to be in relationships with others, how to be a member of the group. and if this is what they're learning about team development and group development, then obviously it will have far-reaching consequences. so ultimately, then, hazing prevention is about working toward the kind of world we want to live in. with the kind of leaders we want to help guide our future. strong leaders who can build cohesive groups with members who feel engaged and powered and challenged to be the best they can be without having to be subjected to abuse in the name of tradition or group unity. as a community issue with far-reaching effect, we all have a responsibility to make a difference by committing to hazing prevention. at the local level, i urge you to share information about hazing and engage family and friends and colleagues and community members in discussions about it. include information in your news

letters and workshops and professional development opportunities. and of course it's vital to help students and the adults in their live ace quire the skills they need to identify hazing and then intervene. and you can help by practicing and engaging youth and practicing what to say and do if they encounter a hazing situation. challenging students to build new traditions and bonding activities that doesn't rely on hazing is vital. we can urge policy makers to include hazing as research funding and program attic initiatives. finally, if we want all of our students to thrive in safe, supportive and respectful environments, then hazing has no place in our schools or communities. it is our responsibility to stop hazing. there is so much to be done and no time to waste.

i challenge you to join me in taking action to prevent hazing and in the process we'll develop healthy students and communities and a better world. thank you. >> thank you, elizabeth, for your presentation. let's give her another round of applause. so now i'd like to open it up to questions from audience members. i saw your hand go up first. >> you mentioned something about things to say to somebody that might be going to be hazed or something like that. where do we find that? >> you can go to safehaven.org. that's my group. yeah. there are a lot of resources. and i centre sources that should be included on your little bracelet. >> yes.

elizabeth and darlene's presentations are available on the wrist bands that you're wearing and then they're also available on the web sites where you registered for this. there is also a research paper that elizabeth wrote about hazing in high school as well if you guys want to take a look at that too. >> -- i got three of the five. >> okay. notice, notice the event, the issue. so in my case it was notice hazing. then you have to interpret it as a problem. third, recognize your responsibility to change it or intervene. third, acquire the skills needed -- i'm sorry. i'm on the fourth. acquire the skills needed to intervene. because you can be highly motivated and want to do something. you see something you think it's wrong. and you really want to do something. if you don't have the skill, you often don't ask.

then fifth to take action. >> thank you. >> we learned this morning that -- experience the most violent among groups. do we know the statistics? >> say the last piece? >> do we know what the statistics are for teenagers in terms of teen dating violence, teenagers are more likely to experience violence? do we know what the numbers are? >> i don't know right off hand. i think if you go to loveisrespect.org, they have a lot of stats on their website. yeah. uh-huh. yep. >> our football jamboree and the teams come and cheer.

they have like a party. it was this girls' house, it was a slumber party and it was kind of like a scavenger hunt. they have to go around and get certain stuff. it wasn't, like, anything like bad. it was nothing illegal or anything. but, like, the football players had one but it was, like, you know, get footballs thrown at you and all this other stuff. and i was, like, wondering if that was haze, because the coach, like -- it happened, like, at practice. they had to run. they had to -- like they clean up the cheer buses and the varsity plays junior varsity, they had to do that. i was wondering if that was hazing? >> it sounds like it to me, yes. and, again, it's not about -- i'm glad how you pointed out how the scavenger hunt may or may not be -- it's not in and of

itself but how it happens that makes it hazing. >> hi. i have a question for elizabeth. was key if you want to do something. where is that that you acquire that skill? >> well, we are learning. we're applying what's been learned in violence -- especially sexual violence prevention because there is an evidence base for bystander intervention there. and prevention innovations at the university of new hampshire has this program called know your power. we're collaborating with them to translate what's been learned there for hazing. they have a great program that, you know, builds the skills and so, you know, there are so many different -- but it takes practice. it's like you know, what they do

is have people role play. and, you know, you practice what might be a potential scenario and use the words. in colleges and universities were trying to do that in new student orientation. they have skits with these scenarios and then have breakout groups after to get students to practice. i think we can do that thing also in schools. >> sorry. >> -- how effective that is? >> this prevention intervention group has statistics. they have an evidence base. another thing i quickly mention is what they've also done, which is really innovative and i love the data supporting it, is social marketing. so they have a really sophisticated way of having

images of students intervening as bystanders. and -- yeah. and they're on posters. they're on -- this is at universities. they're on the campus buses and table tents in the dining hall and developed by students who say, yep, that looks like me and my friends in a situation we might be in. and then, you know, and they have -- and then so they do a workshop on by stander intervention and then they use the social marketing as a booster. and they have found that it effective in actually changing behavior and promoting the likelihood that people will intervene in those kinds of situations. afterwards i can give you the contact information. >> i want to add a couple of resources. you talk about skill sets. from the parent/teacher standpoint and for students themselves. you can go on -- what is it -- thatsnotcool.com. and they have all kinds of apps,

somewhat role play, skit type of ways of, you know, somewhat highlighting how you should handle certain situations. things of that nature. also can you go to the teen -- teendatingabuse.org website for information as well. and lastly, greendot is a bystander intervention strategy which i think you can use in that case, too, as well. i think she's been holding her hand up for a while. >> so we can answer your question, we have a short amount of time before we have to end. >> yes. >> -- social marketing about the aura around these clubs that kids go through hazing to get into because i think one of your bullet point, interpreting the event is a problem, a lot of kids who are going into or want to join these clubs think of it almost as an honor.

>> yeah. >> it's kind of this brainwashing. >> absolutely. >> they're going through this hazing but they feel like it's an honor that they've been asked to do it. and so the marketing needs to be up front about the clubs and the aura so that the kids are alerted way before they even are in the situation where they're intervening. >> absolutely. yeah. i wholeheartedly agree with you. i don't know of anything yet that has accomplished it, but we're moving in that direction. yeah. >> unfortunately, we're out of time. but i do want to encourage everyone here to please read through their biographies. they have a lot of information about the work that they're doing, what their offices are doing. they've provided you with some great resources today and some great jumping-off points. so thank you both sincerely for coming. thanks for talking about that. c-span's campaign 2014

coverage continues tonight with the wisconsin governor's debate between incumbent scott walker and democratic challenger mary burke. here's some recent campaign ads. >> mary burke lied about her jobs plan. turns out it was plagiarized and now she's at it again attacking scott walker's record on jobs. attacks the "milwaukee journal sentinel" say are false. she's twisting the numbers, and it's not the first time. the truth? in the last year, wisconsin ranked third in midwest job growth. the facts are wisconsin gained 100,000 jobs under scott walker and we can't trust mary burke. he made a pledge. >> 250,000 new jobs by the end of our first term in office. >> and asked us to hold him to it. >> is this a campaign promise, something you want to be held to? >> absolutely. >> today wisconsin is dead last in midwest job growth, tenth out

of ten. >> wisconsin lags behind most of the country when it comes to job growth. >> and those 250,000 jobs not even close. broken promises, dead last in jobs. scott walker's not working for you. >> it's been called the lie of the year. >> if you like your health care plan, you can keep it your health care plan. >> and mary burke supports it. >> it doesn't mean that the government's going to tell you which doctors to go to or which plan to have. >> but millions have lost their doctors and their plans. mary burke says she still supports obamacare unequivocally and wants to expand it. wisconsin can't afford madison liberal mary burke. >> period, end of story. >> you know who had a really good idea about taxes? ronald reagan. surprised you, didn't i. reagan expanded the earned income tax credit, cutting taxes for working families. you know who had a really bad idea? governor walker.

he did just the opposite, cutting taxes for the wealthiest and racing them on 140,000 wisconsin families. raising income taxes on working families isn't just bad economics. it's wrong. >> mary burke, governor. >> recent polling has listed this race as a toss-up. see tonight's wisconsin governor's debate live at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. be part of c-span's campaign 2014 coverage. follow us on twitter and like us on facebook. to get debate schedule, video clips of key moments, debate previews from our politics team, c-span is bringing you over 107 house and governor debates, and you can instantly share your reactions to what the candidates are saying. the battle for control of congress. stay in touch and engage by following us on twitter at c-span. and liking us on facebook at facebook.com/c-span.

our rebroadcast of the national bullying prevention summit continues with a discussion about state and federal laws. this is about 50 minutes. >> good afternoon. i think we'll get started. apologize for running a few minutes late here. i'm going to go through introductions fairly quickly. my name is torey cummings. i'm a trial attorney with the department of justice in the civil rights division educational opportunities section. my work involves enforcing various civil rights statutes that apply to k-12 schools, colleges and universities through investigation, litigation and settlement negotiations. i've done a number of cases related to harassment. and particularly cases related

to sex-based harassment including some lgbt issues. next to me is dr. jorge strabstein, who is a child and adolescent psychiatrist. he does he clinical and research work to detect, prevent and treat physical and emotional health problems affecting young people who are being bullied and who bully others. he's also a public health advocate. he has testified before the u.s. congress, the maryland assembly and the district of columbia on behalf of anti-bullying legislation. then we have charlotte landberg, who is a staff attorney here at the u.s. department of education in the office for civil rights where she works in the program legal group and focuses on disability rights guidance related to elementary, secondary

and postsecondary education. and on my right is dr. sarah allen who is also with the department of education. she is a program specialist for the office of special education programs research to practice division. she leads the personnel development program aimed at improving the quality of general and special education teachers, early intervention and early childhood providers and related services personnel who are skilled in the use of effective instruction and interviewing interventions to prevent outcomes for children with disabilities. we're going to talk to you all today about state and federal laws, policies, and guidance related to harassment. we're going to start by each of the panelists here doing about a ten-minute presentation. and then we'll have some chunk of time at the end for questions and further discussion. so without hesitation, i'll let dr. allen lead it off. >> good afternoon. thank you.

and i would like to thank torey and others for including the office of special education and rehabilitative services in the presentation this afternoon. i'm really pleased to have the opportunity to talk about federal law that impacts students with disabilities in particular around bullying behavior -- preventing and addressing bullying behaviors. the office within the u.s. department of education, we support programs that serve millions of children, youth, and adults with disabilities. and one of the laws authorizing the office's programs and activities is the individuals with disabilities act, also known as i.d.e.a.

i.d.e.a. governs how they provide early intervention, special education and related services to more than 6.5 million eligible infant twns united states. there are 14 different disability areas. i work within osurs, i work in the office of special education programs. we have the authority to administer funds provided under i.d.e.a. just to give you the background and the context of the policy that i'll be talking about in just a minute. for those who may not be as familiar with i.d.e.a. and services for children with disabilities, i want to draw your attention to a couple of terms within the law that are important when we think about serving students with disabilities who might be the target or the person initiating bullying behaviors.

and the first is free and appropriate public education. as i.d.e.a. was reauthorizeded in 2004, lawsuit clarified the intended outcome for each child with a disability is that they be provided a free and appropriate education that prepares them for future education, employment, and independent living by providing an educational program designed to meet the unique learning needs of each child. so it's critical that the educational program, the instructions, supports, and services provided to children with disabilities are structured around their unique learning needs. and then secondly, regulations clarify that children with disabilities are to be educated in the least restrictive environment, lre, to the maximum extent possible. as we understand the law, the least restrictive environment is intended to be the environment most like that of a typical

setting that would meet the needs of the child with a disability, so the maximum extent possible. i.d.e.a. provides the basis for a dear colleague letter released by the acting assistant secretary for osurs and melody musgrove, the director of osep, about a year ago, almost this week a year ago in august that addressed and was intended to provide guidance on how i.d.e.a. would be relevant for protecting student with disabilities who might be bullied or be bullying others. osurs and osep are very active in -- and supportive of the department of education's policy and position, asserting that

bullying any student by another student for any reason cannot be tolerated in our schools. you've heard a few people earlier on panels today talking about the work that's happened for 15 or 16 years coming out of our office, talking about multitiered services, talking about safe, positive healthy schools for our students. and so we often talk about and support the idea of no bullying, safe, positive, healthy students for all students, but we have a particular focus on students with disabilities. it's hard -- the numbers. it's hard to get a good sense and to assign numbers really to describe the incidents of bullying, but we do know that consistently surveys and other reports indicate that students with disabilities are disproportionately affected by bullying, two to three time more likely to be the target of bullying behavior than the

nondisabled peers. just to share a few statistics, in some reports, 75% of children with disabilities report being bullied at least once in the past ten months. 20 to 50% report being bullied at some point during their school years. 40% to 70% say that bullying incidents in school take place often on class breaks, in the lunch rooms, hallways, bathrooms, and typically are brief incidents but have an impact that show more than 60% of kids with disabilities report bullying as a part of their school experience. and, again, two to three times more than their typical peers. here's a couple of examples for our edificatioedification.

a second grader with a learning disability with difficulties with decoding unfamiliar words result in giggling and name calling whenever he is called upon to read allowed, to write on the board in class with the taunting more often than not carrying on into other settings such as the cafeteria, the playground and leaving an impression about this child that will carry with him for many years. a fifth grader with an emotional disability despite her creativity, her deep knowledge for the subject matter is always the last one to be chosen by peers for a group of projects because of her disorganized approach to work and her need for modeling and structure on the work assignment. a ninth-grader with an intellectual disability who is told not to climb on new gym equipment but is egged on by peers until he succumbs and breaks the rules, resulting in punishment and further victimization by peers. an 11th grader with a learning

disability who struggles with rapid reading and short-term memory, has comprehension deficits, and is told by the guidance counsellor that he would not be a good candidate is discouraged from setting his ambitions and sights on enrollment in a competitive college. as we think about situations in which kids are involved on a regular, none of those are extraordinary. there are extraordinary examples we hear about in the news or are publicized. these are kind of, sadly i think everyday situations that happen in schools. in response to requests from disability organizations, as i mentioned, osurs released a "dear colleague" letter that intended to clarify the responsibilities a school, a school district would have under i.d.e.a. here's the gift of it. under i.d.e.a., schools and school districts are obligated to ensure that students with

disabilities receive a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment. bullying of a student with a disability, regardless of whether it is related to the disability or not, is considered a denial of f.a.t.e. if it results in the student not getting a meaningful educational benefit under i.d.e.a. and must be remedied. the intent of the letter is to draw attention, raise awareness that i.d.e.a. considerations must -- may apply, could apply to make -- to sort of put schools on notice that they need to consider i.d.e.a. when bullying behaviors involve a student with a disability. if the student's moved to a more restrictive environment, i heard

examples this morning if the student is denied access to a program such as physical education, if he's -- or she is discouraged from participating in a program such as the example i gave you a minute before, it is incumbent upon the school to revisit -- have the iep team, the team that helps set up, including parents the student's individual educational program would reconvene and would gather information and make decisions to decide if the child's being provided meaningful educational benefit in the least restrictive environment. okay. hold on. in addition to the letter, as an enclosure to the letter, we felt it was critical to make a statement about the importance of preventing bullying. so for a school to recognize that they have a responsibility to address bullying behavior under i.d.e.a. if a student with

a disability is involved, but more importantly, that -- as adults in schools and as parents and community members we have an obligation first to prevent bullying. so in addition to the "dear colleague" letter, we had an enclosure that outlined effective practices for preventing and addressing bullying. we encouraged schools to use a multitiered framework, something like pbis or the multitiered structures. you've heard people talking about to teach appropriate behaviors and how to respond to provide active adult supervision. so to look at the evidence base, use the research to inform the kind of practices that would be implemented. and really what we would like to do is draw your attention to the letter, encourage you to make school boards, administrators, staff, teachers certified and

otherwise working within schools aware of the "dear colleague" letter and implection for bullying prevention and addressing their behaviors under i.d.e.a., encourage kids to re-evaluate the practices. most schools don't have policies on the books, but it's important we re-evaluate them annually if not more often to see that they're including the guidance provided by this letter and others we'll be talking about. so re-evaluate your policies and build evidence-based practices first prevent bullying behavior. and secondly, be prepared to address it if it were to occur. and then finally, please check out some of our resources. the "dear colleague" letter and the effective evidence-based practices are available on the

website. other funded resources, the pbis center for many years, and i know paula and others are here. we funded the pacer center. they have some particularly for addressing bullying around -- for children with disabilities. and finally, the intensive intervention center is a national center recently funded to talk about tier 3 kind of work. so, when you are working with a child who has intense individualized needs, they can provide some resources that might be helpful in addressing them. thank you. mrk applau >> i'm going to ask everyone, if you have a question for dr. allen, please jot is down and save it until the end during the discussion portion. we'll go right into charlotte lanvers presentation.

>> and i don't have a powerpoint. so if it's not on, that's as it should be. i'm charlotte lanvers, i'm with the office of civil rights and the department of education. today i am intending to talk first about our enforcement work with respect to complaints involving allegation of harassment based on a protected civil right. so harassment based on race, color, national origin, sex, disability or age. and nextly talk about the

section 504 implications that can arise from bullying or harassment. finally i'll talk about how the two can interact at times. so, ocr, the office for civil rights enforces several civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, disability and age. essentially as explained in our 2010 dear colleague letter on harassment and bully iing schoo

have several obligations as soon as they learn of bullying or harassing conduct based on a protected class. so, as soon as they know or should know that a child is being subject to bullying or harassing behavior, they have an obligation to investigate. if the results of the investigation shows that the student is being subject to a hostile environment, which is essentially conduct that is sufficiently serious to interfere with or limit a

student's ability to participate in or benefit from the services, activities or opportunities offered by the school, the school is then required to take prompt and effective steps reasonably calculated to end the bullying or the harassment, eliminate the hostile environment and prevent the conduct from recurring and remedy its effects as appropriate. you'll notice that we at ocr can less about if a student uses magic words to tell a school officials that they have been subject to bullying or harassing

conduct. instead ocr is more interested in the school's obligation to respond appropriately regardss of how the child terms the incident. so, if a child calls it bullying, teasing or hazing isn't as important as if it's actually happening. if it is happening, schools have very real obligations to act. so, that's an important point to keep in mind. earlier, dr. allen talked about the implications on fafe under

i ida. section 504 is a law i should explain because sometimes i get accustomed to the law i enforce and i fail to explain its definition. so, section 504 requires schools provide students with disabilities equal opportunities and must ensure that students with disabilities receive a free appropriate public education. at times bullying or harassing conduct can also implicate a child's ability to receive equal educational opportunities. so, if a child is teased constantly at school and becomes less interested or able to actively participate in the

school program, it may implicate their ability to access a fape. and similarly to the other analysis, if the school is observing this or if the school should be observing this noticeable change in the child's ability to participate, they may have an obligation to act to possibly meet to ensure that the child is continuing to receive fape. and the failure to do so could result in the school's failure to provide fape if, in fact, that child is not accessing fape any longer. so, how the two concepts

interact is at times a child who is subject to bullying or harassing conduct under a harassment approach, may also be experiencing a diminishment in their access of fape. so, schools should be aware that bullying or harassing conduct can implicate numerous legal standards.

i think that's a basic legal analysis. that's enough for now. and if individuals are interested in asking questions afterwards, i'd be answer them. so, thank you. >> good afternoon. thank you so much for the organizers of the summit for inviting me to be part of this panel. i'm the medical director of the clinic for health problems associated with bullying. in the next ten minutes i would like to highlight three main related points about the problem

of bullying as seen from a public health perspective. number one, the recent evolving understanding, not only about the concept and nature of what bullying is all about, but also its epidemiology, the ecology and, above all, the very serious public health risk related to this form of maltreatment. number two, the enacted anti-bullying laws lack public health provision measures. and, therefore, we need to consider future public policies that should include a three-tier level of strategy that i will discuss in a couple of minutes. this pyramid shows at its base the approximately 40e% of u.s. children that participate in bullying incidents as victims and/or as perpetrators.

out of this population, a quarter of them, 23%, suffer from a wide array of physical and mental health issues as a result of their participation in bullying 40% of them suffer from bullying health-related problems. they try to hurt themselves or others on purpose. and we are left with the main public health question of how many deaths, juvenile deaths, occur per year in the united states that are related to bullying. perpetrators of bullying are at a significant higher risk compared to peers not involved in bullying, suffer frequently, i mean once a week or more frequent, array of physical or

emotional problems, including headaches, stomachaches, dizziness and/or backaches, as well as daily depression, irritability, anxiety and insomn insomnia. furthermore, they are also at higher risk as compared to their peers that do not participate in bullying in attempt in suicide, suffering from accidental or intentional injuries, running away from home, abusing alcohol and drugs, smoking daily, carrying weapons to school, hurting others, having a decline in academic performance and significant absentism, and, therefore, we see how bullying is at the crossroads of very, very serious public health risks. we don't know how many youngsters die per year with a history associated with bullying. for the time being, we do know

bullying-related mortality may include an unknown portion of the 2,000 suicide deaths -- juvenile suicidal deaths in the united states, and an unknown fraction of the almost 6,000 juvenile accidental deaths. plus, all the 2,000 homicides per year. from a public health point of view, homicide should be regarded as maximum consequence of physical aggression or bullying. so in the case of homicide, there is a situation of bullying behind. it all depends on how you define bullying. so, in summary we can say at least 2,000 cases of juvenile-related deaths per year do occur in the united states. from a public health h perspective, around the world

and social settings. it can be manifested as physical aggression, verbal aggression. also, we should consider the act of daring somebody to do something dangerous or in appropriate in exchange of being accepted in a group or favors. therefore, that has tremendous consequence in terms of considering hazing is a form of bullying. also in juvenile dating relationships the purr put on one of the partners, well, if you love me, blah, blah, blah, that may lead to unwanted pregnancy and so on. spreading rumors, ostracizing, and rejection or exclusion. above all, bullying, and probably we should change the term bullying, is part of the whole spectrum of maltreatment that started 45 years ago with the discovery by a pediatrician of the concept of child abuse.

so, if bullying is in the center here, it shares elements of intimidation and harassment. at one extreme, verbal or physical aggression or abuse and violence. and the other extreme, neglect, rejection or exclusion. doesn't have to be from one child to another, an adult to a child, a child to an adult, and so on. it is important, and i will expand on this in the questions and answers, to consider that intentionality, balance of power and repetitive pattern over time may not be required cry tear yan in medical point of view. i know my colleagues in research will absolutely disagree with this. and it will be disagreed in the official definition that has been implemented by the federal government.

with all due respect of that, from research point of view, i think that definition is correct, but for us that are out there in the trenches, the practitioners, you cannot determine intentionality, you cannot determine -- well, i'll go more in details later on. the relevance of ascertaining of whether the bullying occurred is only significant in litigious framework. it may not be relevant fra a public health perspective as the patient may still have been hurt and is in the eye of the beholder. the most relevant aspect of the resolving understanding of the ecology and epidemiology of bullying is that it occurs across social settings. at times concurrently or along the life span. it primarily happens at home between siblings that love each

other and is being misconstrued by the community as so-called sibling rivalry but with all the love in the world, it can kill each other. it also occurs in the neighborhood, in the telephones and the internet, walking to and from school, on the school bus, at school, during after-school programs, in extracurricular activities, in summer camp, in dating relationships, in the workplace. yes, 30% of youngsters age 16 or above in -- 16 to 18 years of age in the united states work part time and this happens in the workplace. and last but not least, we should not forget the young people in correctional facilities. a review of the anti-bullying state laws. i'm talking about almost all the states have enacted laws, including also the common wealth of puerto rico and guam.

number one, we find there is a preponderance of reporting mechanism. now, less predominant is the fact that this public policy call for the protection of victim, not always, foster civility and enhancement of school climate. what is very infrequent or almost lacking are the provisions to race awareness about the health risks to bullying, promote detection and foster medical referral and include the public health part of the house. for the past six years at children's hospital we have been advocating for a three-level strategy for the prevention of public health to bullying. this principle has been enincorporated in a joint position statement of the american psychiatric association and the american academy of child and adolescent psychiatry.

we are talking about all the measures to raise public awareness about the nature and the public -- and the health risk of bullying. to promote safe social environment with respect to sensitivity, mutual support, all the good prachlz we've heard this morning, and we're debating which program is better, at the end of the day, in the best of circumstances they can decrease the incidence of prevention in only 45%, 50%. so, we are left with kids that no matter which program we have, they are continuing to bully. and the question is in terms of secondary prevention, health detection of bullying in emergency rooms in regular pediatric visits, in adolescent visits should be continued.

should be reported not for the purpose of kids being punished but to support victims and perpetrator. and last but not least, medical referral. on this basis, more specifically we need bullying public policies that help to raise community awareness about the nature and toxicity of bullying across social settings and along the life span to promote a physical and emotional safety of all social and community environments. not just the school. develop mutual respect and sensitivity to others. ensure adaptation to evolving notion of what is known as bullying and its comparability to other forms of maltreatment. bullying is intertwined with many other forms of maltreatment. the child being bullied today may may have been victimized --

crossing the border into the united states as illegal immigrant or may have been physical abuse at home or witnessed domestic violence or have other things. avoid requirement constraints within the bullying. very important to advocate against the use of corporal punishment as a way to prevent behavioral problems. at least almost 20 states of the union still have in their codes, physical punishment in the schools. and it's time to call attention to this matter as very serious public health problem. furthermore, most of the states have in their codes an octiony mother ron public health message called reasonable corporal punishment. you tell me what reasonable is and we can discuss that in the questions and answers.

future policy should promote clinical detection of bullying and further related health problems. foster sxhunt acceptance to report bullying as a public health tool to ensure health intervention and the children should understand they are not being considered a snitch if they are doing it, but definitely they are helping for a health problems. support counsel of the perpetrator. make treatment available to victims, bystanders and perpetrators who suffer from related health problems. make treatment available to perpetrators who are unable to stop bullying despite all the good offices from the school. and finally, facilitate private/public partnership to implement strategies. i have the privilege in the last year to coordinate efforts, launching hopefully next month, of the global health initiative for the social prevention of

bullying. this will be an international effort to raise global awareness about the serious health and risks associated with bullying and to promote detention, protection and treatment by all health professionals in all countries within a whole community effort and this will be implemented by direct communication with those schools of medicine across the world and medical societies and provide them with a website that is almost being finish the right now that has links to studies that have been done. and they are included in the national library of medicine. so, they have the direct links -- just to raise awareness among physicians, nurses, psychiatrists, psychologist and so on. thank you very much.

>> thank you to all three panelists for their very interesting presentations. i'd like to open the door to questions. if not, i will ask the first question. to my colleagues from the department of education. i'm wondering if you can share a little bit about what types of recommend dismight be appropriate for school districts to implement once there is a violation of i.d.e.a. as a denial of fape as a result of bullying.

>> assuming for a moment that the allegations involved a child with a disability, who alleges both that he or she was harassed based on his or her disability and also that he or she was not receiving a free appropriate public education, in part because of the bullying, and assuming ocr completed an investigation and into a resolution agreement with a

recipient, it could bind, for example, and this is completely a hypothetical, that the -- it could first require that the child's iep team or 504 team meet to talk about the extent to which the bullying has had an adverse effect on the child's ability to receive fape. it could also consider offering counseling to the student to remedy the harm. it could also monitor to see whether bullying persists. and if so, they could reconvene

the 504 team or iep team to talk about other approaches. in addition, as part of the harassment violation, they could develop and implement a schoolwide bullying prevention strategy. they could devise a voluntary school climate survey for students and parents to assess the presence and effects of bullying based on disability. they could revise the district's anti-bullying policy to account for what happened in this particular case.

and they could also train staff and parent volunteers, again, to look for signs of bullying or harassing conduct. and also to respond appropriately if they encounter those things. >> i just want to agree and reiterate my background is not legal, but i would -- from my work as a school psychologist and thinking, you know, as a member of an educational team that might support an individual student, i think a first step is to reconvene the iep team and to consider, as you said, the impact of the bullying behavior. sometimes -- part of the reason we issued the guidance is sometimes a quick response is to take the child out of the

dangerous situation or the problematic situation. and we really wanted to make clear that the child with the disability may not need to be removed from the situation but the situation may need to be addressed by changing instruction, changing -- taking, you know, other -- putting additional supervision in place, additional supports and intervention but not immediately removing a child from a situation. so, for example, a child with a disability is in a science class. this was a -- i worked with a school around this. and it was difficult to have the child, for whatever reason, participate, so they just canceled all the field trips. eliminated that portion of the science curriculum instead of trying to work around -- that wasn't a bullying situation necessarily, but instead of just eliminating the educational opportunity or removing child with the disability, it's important to look at the situation and consider some alternatives.

and you suggested a number of them i'm sorry. yeah, sorry. >> i wanted to add the fact that one of the recommendations we make to parents that need to meet with principal and counselor to report situation of bullying is not to discuss this matter in the contents of a potential iep meeting and not to mix apples and oranges. just to discuss the merits of the bullying incidence in itself and discuss the rights of the child for a physical and emotional safe environment should protect it. and the other children should be counselled, not punished. if it gets discussed in iep meeting, sometimes the issues get a little bit confused. although, if it's a child with a disability, then i will fully agree with you.

but talking about iep meetings, the mistreatment sometimes doesn't come from child to child. the mistreatment sometimes comes from adults to children. and in the schools, many of my patients sometimes complain that the yelling of the teacher, you know, they feel like being mistreated. above all, they feel mistreated when the adults, the powers that be, don't recognize that bullying really has happened. you have not been bullied because it doesn't meet the criteria, whatever it is. losing sptsz from the powers that be is worst than the victimization itself. sometimes in terms of being mistreated, sometimes not being provided services when it's needed. one typical example i see very frequently is the 20% or 30% of children that have significant

language processing difficulties in terms of processing information, express it, and if they are not of american extraction, these kids are assigned to eas. this was not designed to treat speech and language problems. there, you have mistreatment coming to the kids on top of situations of bullying. >> yes, we have a question over here. >> i just have confusion, okay? >> sure. >> the confusion is -- so, with your intention, could you expand on that a little more. if you don't use repeated intentional power base actions as bullying, do you define it as aggression? i just want to know what you were talking about with the definition. cdc comes out with a definition that means the same thing. >> yeah.

my discrepancy from medical point of view is intentionality, repetition. first of all, the victim can be hurt physically or emotionally regardless of the intention. let's take the example of a child that cannot control his or her impulses because has tourette or impulse control or whatever. that child doesn't want to hurt somebody else but that other child is going to be hurt physically or emotionally, regardless. that's number one. repetition, one knock on the head may be sufficient to land this kid in the hospital. that's number one. number, two it may be the first incident this year, but it may come on top of previous incidents either in school, at home or other forms of victimization. so repetition, you don't need to have two or three in order to be

in concert. imbalance of power is very, very difficult to assess. and fighting is -- there is bullying in fighting. they are both hurting each other. and the child that are most recognized and have the highest level of morbidity and mortality are involved as perpetrators and as victims. not only they have the highest morbidity, but they are not understood by the school because they say, well, what do you expect? he or she is provoking it. well, one thing has nothing to do with the other. the message we send to the schools is, we are going to protect the other children in your school, so our patient doesn't hurt the other children. please help our patient to be protected from the other children. so, everybody needs to be protected. i don't know if i answer your question about intentionality and imbalance of power.

that's where we have a discrepancy with research. and, you know, i don't blame the people in research. they need to have district definitions in order to make sense of the studies, but that does not apply to the day-to-day clinical work. >> in listening to all of the presentations today, i was reminded of a phenomenon that we at the department of justice, often in connection with ocr have actually been requiring school districts, where we found a violation of federal civil rights laws related to harassment. we have on occasion required school districts to hire a mental health consultant or mental health professional to come in and look at the impacts of harassment on the students in the school district. and i've gotten very positive feedback from community members

and school districts on how helpful that has been. so i just wanted to share that point. i think we have one more question. i apologize for running a little late. >> so, as you've discussed, the medical definition of bullying, i'm wondering if we're not moving then towards a diagnosis, an e.d. diagnosis. is that the intent behind what you shared today? >> no. yes and no. bullying is relevant not only because there is violation of civil rights and because the kids -- there is decline in academic performance, from point of view is very serious. at the end of the day what trumps is public health issue. it's not that it's also a public health issue. it's primarily public health issue because kids are suffering, both the perpetrators and the victims, and they can die. now, in terms of diagnosis, if there is this cluster of

symptoms, and i have not included other things that are very frequently found, like nightmares and flashbacks, you can think of the possibility that bullying related medical problems can be included if we need to -- if we need to use diagnosis of something that is not in the dsm but from the world health organization and syndrome of maltreatment. previously used for child abuse, but you can use for many, many things. that's the reason why i highlighted the concept of -- for us to think the spectrum of maltreatment. and this term bullying. can you call it something else. at the end of the day is a form of maltreatment very much enter

twined and comored by with other things at the same time. i don't know if that answers your question. >> it does. thank you. >> i know we're running a little late. i'm going to go ahead and close out. don't let me speak out of turn but i think we'd be happy to sfik around for a few minutes if folks want to ask questions individually. thank you so much. enjoy the rest of the day. >> here's a look at our pry time schedule on the c-span networks. starting at 8 p.m. eastern, live coverage of wisconsin governor's debate between incumbent scott walker and democratic challenger mary burke on c-span. on c-span2 it's book tv with authors and programs looking at u.s. national security. and here on c-span3, it's american history tv with events on u.s. civil rights.

>> earlier this week a florida gov's debate was held between rick scott and charlie crist. governor scott originally refused to come to the stand because of a fan that was positioned at charlie crist's podium. here's a look. >> ladies and gentlemen, we have an extremely peculiar situation right now. we have governor charlie crist -- florida governor rick scott, our incumbent governor, republican candidate for governor, is also in the building.

governor rick scott, we have been told governor scott will not be participating in this debate. now, let me explain what this is all about. governor crist has asked to have a small fan placed underneath his podium. the rules of the debate that i was shown by the scott campaign say there should be no fan. somehow there is a fan there. and for that reason, ladies and gentlemen, i am being told governor scott will not join us for this debate. ladies and gentlemen -- ladies and gentlemen, this is a debate. rosemary gudroeau, what can we

say? >> that's the ultimate pleading of the fifth i've ever heard in my life. wow. i'm sad people of florida are not -- >> governor e we're not asking you a question. >> get to hear -- >> we're not asking a question. i'm asking rosemary about the situation we find ours in. >> governor crist, dot rules of the debate say there should not be a fan? >> not that i'm aware of. >> the rules that the scott campaign show us that say no electronics can be included -- >> are we really going to debate about a fan or talk about education and environment and the future of our state? i mean, really? there are serious issues facing our face, funding education

appropriately, protecting our environment, making sure we have ethical honest leadership -- >> governor -- >> i mean, if he's going to give it to me, i'm going to take it. >> this is not -- this is not -- this is not -- this is not a platform for one candidate. we're hoping governor scott will join us on the stage. >> well, that will be great. >> i'm told governor scott will be on the stage. i was shown a copy of the rules they showed me that said there would be no fans on the podium. >> there are my fans. very strange. >> should we get rid of the fan? >> my understanding is governor scott will be coming out. >> not in my life. >> frank, have you ever seen

anything like this? >> no, i haven't. this is remarkable over sort of a trivial issue, no matter which side you believe you're on. >> we were placed in the awkward situation of having to died this. i don't think it's our role to determine. thank you. ladies and gentlemen, that has to be the most unique beginning to any debate. >> i don't think we'll forget. >> not only in florida but i think anywhere in the country. let us start. >> that was part of this week's florida governor's debate. recent polling has listed this race as a toss-up. see the entire debate and dozens of others any time online at c-span.org.

c-span's 2015 student cam competition is under way. this will award 150 prizes totaling $150,000. create a five to seven-minute documentary on the topic the three branches and you. videos need to include c-span program, show varying points of view and must be submitted by january 20, 2015. go to studentcam.org for more information. grab a camera and get started today. next, high school students offer their perspectives on the problem of bullying. this is part of the annual bullying prevention summit in washington, d.c. and an effort to create a national strategy to address the issue. this is about half an hour. >> i'm dr. lisa lauxman for national institute of food and agriculture. it's my privilege today to be

the moderator for this panel of youth experts. they are experts because they're here and they have your -- they have ear of all of you in the audience and they have important things to say. we need to let you know this was a youth/adult partnership so those adults who participated with the youth and the youth focus groups, would you please raise your hands because colleagues of the federal enter agency group here included stephanie eraff, amy rainy, bob freeman and karen gorgeon. the people who took notes, they're important. i apologize in advance if i screw up your name. it was stephanie, erin and fran she is kashgs i thi cesca. there were five questions addressed in those youth-led focus groups and they pertain to

what's working in bullying prevention, reaching special populations, what are some of the challenges in implementing bullying prevention programs, school climate and federal bullying prevention efforts supporting state and local efforts. those are all pretty heavy topics. first, i'd like you to meet the youth who are here today. >> asome. i'm cameron sanford, from tennessee, if you can't tell by my accent already. i'm one of the new national healthy living ambassadors and one of the things i specialize in is bullying prevention. it wasn't until a couple years ago when we actually had a 4-her from my county commit suicide due to bullying. that's when bullying prevention hit home and i said, hey, this needs toe stop. we need to start working with our federal government, we need to start working with one of the best youth development programs in the world, 4-h, and start spreading this across america. that's one of the reasons i

applied to be on the national healthy living team. myself and oakley are on there. our biggest thing is to get bullying toned down in the schools, get more programs out there and start getting this more overwhelmed with everybody being bullying prevention change agents in this world. >> hello, everyone, i'm annae imhoff from the state of oklahoma. i'm founder and creator of sparkle on for a group for eating disorders or suicidal thoughts due to bullying. i came up with that when i attended a medical forum in houston. there was a girl in my group who had an eating disorder but everybody just loved her. she was so charismatic. it hurt me back in her home state of louisiana she had no friends and everybody had turned against her and she had developed an eating disorder because of that. and her home life was also broken. so, when i came back to oklahoma, i wanted to start a program to help girls like her.

>> i've been bullied since i was probably in kindergarten. it sort of escalated to the point where when i came out as bisexual my freshman year of high school, the bullying just hit high levels to the point where someone actually thought it was okay to tell me to go kill myself. which is when i decided to create a nonprofit organization called bully teen support group with the help of an organization called learn serve international. my group, we aim to give peer-to-peer support to any bully victim, whether you're a victim of sexual harassment or sexual orientation bullying or race bullying. we don't care. you're a victim and we're there to help you. nice to meet you all. >> i'm oakley perry and i'm from georgia, if you can't tell by my

accent like cameron said. i'm also a bullying victim. i was bullied all throughout my school career. 4-h was an outlet for me to overcome that. i finished serving my term as 4-h president and i'm a healthy living ambassador for national 4-h counsel. >> you can tell -- yes, a round of applause. thank you. i know you each have your personal life stories but you also had an opportunity to engage with the adults and other youth here in the audience. let's hear a little bit about the key things you're going to remember from those sessions. and we had those five questions, so i know i asked you at random to basically list those. so, oakley, let's start with you first. >> well, sort of grouping the first two questions together for my group. the first question is, what's

things happening going on now that's helping bullying prevention. and our group pretty much said youth-to-youth education is what's working. that youth-to-youth educating about bullying problems is hitting home, not necessarily an adult to another youth. by that same token we also said one afternoon in a gym does not work. those programs is not what's helping our youth. if you want to do the one afternoon with the gym, that's great but you need something to continue throughout the school year, throughout summer even, to reinforce what's being taught in that gym for that one afternoon. another point we brought out is we need to educate educators on how to deal with different issues inside schools because many educators do not know how to deal with problems. me in a personal experience. i sat in an eighth grade

classroom and a girl chewed me out, bullied me every single day and the teacher's desk was right beside our desk but the educator didn't do anything about it. i felt the educator did not know how to handle that situation. and so instead of getting involved with it, she let it go. and the last big point we made was, we have special groups that's bullied. two examples is like native american youth and then lbgt youth. we need to have separate resources for those youth. by that same time, we do not need to have so many different sites for youth it's hard for them to navigate. the native american youth may also be lbgt and bullied for both of those things. we need to have one place where those youth can go with different resources in that one place for the different special groups that kids fall under. >> i had some of the same points as oakley but one thing i have different is our group came up

with the idea that the federal government needs to take responsibility for the overall mental health and the social and mental health of a teenager. it's not just education. it's not just academics that we're focusing on. and another topic we this is how can groups reach out to teens who aren't near where resources are available to them? which is why i have a website and an e-mail address that i'd like to share with you all so that if there are any bully victims who need support but aren't in the maryland area, they can reach us. >> and it's on red so you can read it well. >> it says bullied teens 9664@gmail.com.

our website bulliedteensupport group.com. >> in my focus group we covered all the questions but we talked a lot about emotions and emotional stability and safety within the school system. when teachers are judged and their paycheck is based off test scores, they're going to spend time improving test scores rather than spending time on emotional -- on teaching emotions and how to be nice to people. one of the things that came up which was cool was a school that had pictures of every single student up on the wall. every time a teacher connected with one of those students, like really emotionally connected with them, they took the picture down. by the end of the school year, every single picture was taken down. it was a great way, i thought, to be able to focus on the test scores and also in the free time focus on the students and being

able to connect with each and every one of them. >> i tried to narrow it down to six but i have top three. the first thing that hit it off was no unfunded mandate programs. that was they kept going over and over. being 16, i completely understood that. i was like, let's talk about something actually happening in the high school and not, like, at the board of education. another is peer-to-peer education. if someone comes up to me and tries telling me about bullying, one thing that pops into my head is, you don't know where we are today. you were back when it was one-on-one bullying. now it's more bullying on facebook, instagram, things like that. it takes that peer-to-peer bullying because they know where we come from. some of the big challenges they

have was better funding for the program. that was another one that flew over my head. but i completely understand. we had a researcher in our group that was phenomenal. he filled us in on a bunch of data. he agreed 100% that most of that needed to be up to date. another program was -- i can't remember the state. it's called raising healthy children program. it was awesome. they explained it to me. it was really, really neat. i'd like to look into it for tennessee. another thing was ojjdp, office of juvenile justice delinquent prevention. mentors against bullying. if you have that person in your county or in your state being bullied, be the mentor, stand up and say, this is what you can do it, confronting, go to the school if you have a bullying person in your school. that would really connect with

them and got them okay with dealing with bullying but get it out there so they can be mentors to others. like a chain reaction. change agents, get them in position to where they treat bullying prevention to other students around their schools and state as well with. >> so, now i'm going to ask you one question that wasn't really discussed earlier. so, what was the most challenging thing you heard that people needed to have? they talked about what might be working or possible solutions, but what's a challenge that you saw/heard? we address aid couple of them, but i'm just wondering. >> we talked a lot about cyber bullying. how do you as a teacher or school prevent cyber bullying? one school we talked about, the administration monitors the -- what their students post and what accounts their on, which was a great way, but how do you also do that when you're not

monitoring that and something happens? the school would be blamed for it. that's just one of the problems we talked about and addressed. >> one thing we addressed was cell phones in school. two years ago we got a bullying counsel in our school. we didn't really get to use cell phones that year. we could have them but we couldn't have them out. we had 436 applications turned in on bullying. whether there that be sib irbullying or so forth. the next year we could have fell phones out in study hall or lunch. that was a big wow on how social media affected a ton of those applications turned in about bullying, things that happened. this year we're going back to a completely no cell phone call and so i'm looking forward to

sitting down with our counselors at the end of the year and see how many applications we had. and send that out saying, we went to a no-cell phone policy and brought down applications to 200, which is still way too much, but 1400 is an astronomical issue. that's one of the things we talked about in ours as well. >> one of the things we talked about is bandwidth of administration. administration when handling reports of bullying, often they get so overwhelmed, they don't understand how to handle it or they don't -- they can't tell the difference between, like, what is bullying? what is the definition of bullying? there's so many different types of bullying besides cyber bullying, physical bullying, et cetera. finding a bandwidth that works for administration is really hard. >> we talked about several different challenges. for me it's hard to determine just one. because all these challenges can

affected you providing a great anti-bullying program for your community or your school. one thing we really hit home on, that i already sort of mentioned is education for educators. there's one woman in my group, i believe her name was keshia. i may be wrong on this so don't hold me to it. oh, good job? oh, great. so, she runs a program that educates educators. i thought it was such an astronomical idea that she was going out there and she was giving educators the tools they needed to have to deal with these situations. several other different challenges that school systems and that communities face. they can deal with money, they can deal with -- especially in the south -- it's a rite of passage. that's just what happens. there's nothing wrong with it. changing that mind set and ideals can be a big challenge for anyone wanting to do a bullying program if those problems exist. >> well, the last thing i asked you to address was, because you have an opportunity, you have a

platform here where you could give parting comments to those in the audience. so, who would like to go first? >> i have a motto that i have for my organization. it's by being a change someone's world. you can make the difference between that person being alone and that person having a support system. >> stay strong and sparkle on, we focus on peer to peer education and help. and i would love to challenge all of you to challenge your kids and your students to educate their fellow peers and to be a friend. because not only do they feel like they -- if they're getting their peer to peer one on one type of time, they feel that they can talk about their bullying and talk about what they're going through, but they can also -- they feel like they have a friend. they feel like someone their age cares about them.

for kids, that's so important to have someone their age and to have that sort of relationship. >> i would like to say, i had a phenomenal group. i made these people play with toothpaste and paper and tooth picks and stand up and sit down. they were a great group. asked one of them what about the toothpaste, they will be glad to tell you. another thing, i want you to keep doing what you do. if it wasn't for you, we would not be here today on this bullying panel. unfortunately, we have this bad problem in america with bullying. we are thankful in america that we have you guys that are doing this every day, da y in and day out preventing these things. i would like to thank lisa and suzanne for inviting me to this and getting me more into national 4-h council and working with the youth i get to work with. thanks for this wonderful opportunity. i will take it back to my state and make the best of it.

really just thank you guys for being that wonderful mentors to us and seeing where we want to be one day. >> i want to give these youth a round of applause. [ applause ] thank you. oakley? >> it's all right. it's fine. don't worry about it. my bullying story -- i mentioned on that earlier. my bullying story started when my father and mother separated. i became depressed and ate my way out of the depression. i have not quite lost the eat my way out of depression part. my bullying started because of me being an oversized kid. i went to community church a while back. they showed a video. it was about depression. it said, i know how you feel. all these things. i know how it feels to think that you have no friends.

i know how it feels. it was a short video about stuff of that nature. when i was sitting there watching i thought, i know. i know how it feels to sit in your room and think that you have no one in this world that cares about you. i know how it feels to get a weapon and think to yourself that this could be your only resort of getting out of what is so terrible. i know those feelings. no kid should have to know those feelings. no one of any age should have to know those feelings. i believe that we as people should stand up and fight for what we know is right and to keep bullying from happening in our schools and our community and our workplace, even. all throughout this land. that's what i'm going to fight for for the rest of my life. [ applause ] >> thank you. wow. okay. so you can tell, i get to be the person who gets blown away at the front of the audience. what i'd like to know is if you have questions for these yuouth?

we would love for you to ask them questions. anyone? >> if there's a particular person -- >> oh, gosh. maybe to all of you -- it's a complex question. i haven't really thought about how to articulate it. we have data. so we have young people like some of you who have been through some of the most egregious behavior and experiences. it's kind of unimaginable for some of us, i think. maybe a person can have too much empathy, because it's hard not to be moved by these experiences that you guys have been through. it's hard to know what the

answers are. but on the other hand, we have data that shows that really the vast majority of young people in this country are, most of the time, good to each other. you know? that bullying -- we see headlines that say that bullying is an epidemic and cyber bullying is an epidemic. the data really shows that it's far from an epidemic. we also -- i will talk about this in a little bit. we also have research that shows that people need to have the truth. they need to know the data. at the same time that they need to be moved by victims' experiences, they also need to know that it's not a hopeless situation. so how do you guys balance that in your work to educate peers and adults on your experiences and on the solutions that you found to the bullying problem?

how do you balance getting the facts out and helping people see that it really is normative to be kind rather than to be cruel? but cruelty exists. so i would love your wisdom on that. >> first off, you said that it's good for people to know that this is not a hopeless situation. if it was hopeless, there's no point in us being here. i could have went to school today. i could have missed out on being here and not had to send a letter to all my professors saying i'm going to be here. so it's not a hopeless situation. you also said that people for the most part are nice to each other, good to each other. i like to believe that everyone is hard wired to be good people. but i have also been told the saying all my life, one bad am makes the rest of the apples bad. if you have one or two kids in a 30-person classroom that is mistreating other people, then those people are being mistreated. now you have 30 kids, one is

being mistreated, two is doing the mistreating. that's three. so i'm bad with math. let me count. i'm going to be embarrassed. 27 other individuals in that classroom that's being nice to each other. but those other two that were being mean are causing problems for that one that's being the one that the stuff is being done to. it's not a hopeless situation. and i would never, ever want anyone to think that it's a hopeless situation. but i do believe that it is a problem. maybe not headline all the time top problem, but it is something that we face and it's something we need to work towards. did i answer your question? okay. >> on that, you said da da shta shows -- the data only shows what people have come forward and said though. that's the only thing that i

think we need to focus on data that shows everybody. not everybody will come up and say what happened to them as a bullying thing. i've heard oakley's story and i get goose bumps. it's something like that if we can get tons of people to come up and do, that's what's going to happen. you mentioned that it's not an epidemic. i believe an epidemic is widespread. when we have a 12-year-old that's committing suicide because he is being bullied, that's an epidemic for a 16-year-old. that's a huge when you have a friend that commits suicide because he is being bullied. putting that in more situations and tons of people feeling that, that's a horrible thing to have in society that 12-year-olds and 16-year-olds and 9-year-olds are committing suicide due to this thing. it's a disease. it's traveling. it's treatable. we have to have more people out there to do it for sure.

>> there are people who aren't coming forward. i didn't come forward with my story until this past year. it was only because my friends convinced me to go forward, because they saw how it affected me. i didn't come forward with the fact that someone told me to kill myself until two weeks after, because i was terrified of my parents finding out. that's a reality is that these kids, they are terrified of their parents finding out they're not fitting in well at school. they're terrified they're going to get picked on because they snitched. sometimes administration can't handle the amount of reports that they're handling. it's not a hopeless situation, like oakley said. there are people out there who care. we care. i care for everyone. i have so many people who i have to thank who cared for me, who without them i miami not ght noe today because they were there. a message i give to everyone i talk to about bullying is that if you say something -- you have

to say something. it's okay. you are not going to get in trouble. they have to remember that. >> we have two -- i guess -- i don't care which goes first. you have a card? >> i do have a card. i have a question have social media. it's a question we posed to social media is how can we empower youth for change in. >> i know have i been hogging the mike. really, to empower youth, you have to inspire them. you have to give them a story they can relate to. because if they can't relate to something, then they're not going to care. if they don't see that bullying is one-third of the population of all students in the school, then they're not going to care. they have to be touched personally by it. i know t w