Sarah Benson ’11 grew up in Middletown, R.I., with a disabled family member who was a constant target for taunts and worse. It broke her heart, she says, and hurt her entire family. Today, Benson is on the front lines of an anti-bullying movement at Bentley that is helping to educate the local community.
“I’m passionate about this,” says Benson, pictured in the foreground, above. “We need to inform people and talk about how damaging bullying can be.”
A service-learning scholarship recipient, Benson coordinates student programs for the Bentley Service-Learning Center (BSLC). Since last fall, she and Associate Professor of Psychology Greg Hall have been reaching out to Metro Boston schools with a student-run anti-bullying program. Education centers on the different types of bullying, early warning signs, response strategies, and the need for culture change.
Oddly enough, the local initiative was born half a world away.
Global Epidemic
In spring 2010, Benson headed to Australia for a semester at Bond University. She fastened on the destination because of a Bentley connection: Amy Kenworthy ’94, an associate professor of management at Bond and one of Bentley’s first service-learning scholarship recipients. (The university awards 16 such scholarships each year to service-minded students.)
“I saw a great opportunity to help her grow service–learning at Bond,” recalls Benson, a Marketing major who interned for the alumna while Down Under. The pair planned a service project that teamed students in Kenworthy’s Business Negotiations course with local 10th-graders. But their early discussions with the high schoolers suggested the need for a more ambitious program, specifically on bullying.
Focus groups with the teens uncovered the kinds of bullying in their school and the ways that different social groups interact. Benson and Kenworthy’s findings informed a presentation for more than 300 students. Attendees learned what bullying is and why it happens, what to do if you’re a victim or a bystander, and how to help change the abusive culture; stirring video of those who had experienced bullying put a personal face on the issue.
“It was very emotional and powerful,” says Benson. “It helped open our discussion about bullying: It happens in public and private schools, to kids and adults, on the playground and everywhere.”
Over the semester, Benson helped inspire more than 10,000 Aussies – from Bond students and faculty to local families and business people – to sign a pledge and spread the anti-bullying message. Wristbands proclaimed the group’s intent: “One Goal, One Community: Moving Beyond Bullying and Empowering for Life.”
From Playground to Cyberspace
Meanwhile, back at Bentley, Greg Hall was researching the topic for his Cyber Psychology course, which examines the effects of information technology on human behavior. Student assignments for the course typically include running workshops in area schools.
The studies and literature that Hall reviewed pointed to social networking as a major factor in the current epidemic of bullying. For example, a 2008 research brief by the National Crime Prevention Council showed that about one-third of polled adolescents under the age of 18 had been victims of cyberbullying, with chat rooms cited as the most common setting. Nearly 20 percent admitted to harassing others online.
This change in venue – from the confines of the school playground to the limitless Internet – delivers a new set of complexities. Today, bullying follows children home in the form of online videos, pictures, and social sites where bystanders can anonymously pile on the punishment.
“The effect on victims is much more extreme,” explains Hall. “Kids go into school the next day thinking everyone knows what happened – and they’re usually correct. The sense of abandonment and shame is much greater. And it’s 24-7.”
The professor set to building a parent-focused anti-bullying seminar into his course. Then, in early summer, he learned of Benson and Kenworthy’s venture – and plans suddenly became much grander.
“Serendipity had a role, for sure,” he laughs.
Local Focus
The stateside version of “One Goal, One Community” kicked off at Bentley last fall. Kenworthy flew in from Australia to help Benson and Hall with the launch. First was a presentation to key players in the community: the Waltham Police Department, local Boys & Girls Clubs, school superintendents and teachers, and Bentley faculty and students. All came seeking help in implementing a new Massachusetts law that bans bullying on school grounds, on buses, and at school-related activities; it also mandates that every incident be investigated by school officials and reported to the parents of students involved.
In October, a candlelight vigil galvanized the Bentley community after the suicide of Rutgers University student and bullying victim Tyler Clementi. More than 300 Bentley students gathered to talk about combating the problem on their own campus. Alumni were invited to join the cause as well and sign the One Goal, One Community pledge during Homecoming Weekend.
Signing On, Tuning In
The largest Bentley-sponsored anti-bullying program to date took place in November, for the school district in Milton, Mass. Hall and Cyber Psychology students ran evening workshops for 120 parents. Working in pairs, the students used PowerPoint to deliver 90 minutes of information on age-specific types of bullying, parental responses when a child is bullied, and resources such as a manual and web site developed by the Bentley team.
The following day, more than 4,000 students in grades K through 12 gathered in Milton schools for a series of uplifting rallies run by Bentley and Milton High students.
“One of the greatest assets we have is that, as college students, we aren’t far removed from the kids in high school and middle school,” observes Benson. “We’re looked up to by the teens as successful people they want to talk to.”
This spring, Benson and 15 other students are in training with Hall as an “anti-bullying team,” who will continue the work begun last year. A major goal is to educate online bystanders – whom Hall calls “enablers” – about the impact of their actions and words (or their silence).
“This new generation of kids is completely different from 10 years ago,” she says. “They don’t realize how damaging words can be. The old saying – ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me’ – just isn’t true anymore.”