BMS proactive in bully battle

As the problem of bullying — whether it be the generations-old playground abuse or its computer-age offshoot, cyber-bullying — attracts more and more media attention, Baldwin residents can take comfort in the fact that area schools have been battling the problem for nearly a decade.

The week of Oct. 18-22 was declared “Anti-Bullying Week” at Baldwin Middle School. But the effort was not something the school whipped up in reaction to the increasingly tragic spate of bullying cautionary tales that have captured the nation’s attention. In fact, in accordance with October’s longstanding designation as National Anti-Bullying Month, BMS has been setting aside a week to address bullying issues for at least the last eight years.

“I’ve conducted several anti-bullying weeks,” said Laurie Buckley, the middle school dean. “And I know that the two deans who preceded me did as well, so this has been going on for eight years or more.”

While the curriculum addressed the problem of bullying in a general sense, extra attention was paid to the newer, higher-tech problem of cyber-bullying — abuse via email, text message or social networking site.

“Cyber-bullying is currently one of the biggest issues I’m confronting as a dean,” Buckley said on Oct. 21. “This involves things posted on Facebook or other sites or sent through text messaging. One of the biggest problems is that joking and sarcasm don’t translate very well through writing, so people can sometimes feel like they’re under attack. I’ll have parents and kids coming in here, showing us a printed page from an online conversation and asking me to help.”

How prevalent has social networking become? According to the presentation “Social Media Revolution 2,” which was shown to middle school students last week, social networking represents “the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution.”

The Power-Point presentation, compiled by Erik Qualman, author of “Socialnomics: how social media transforms the way we live and do business,” points out that some 96 percent of the generation known as millennials have joined a social network, and that if Facebook, with its approximately 400 million users, were a country, it would be the world’s fourth largest.