According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children 160,000 students in the U.S. refuse to go to school because they are bullied.

The week of Oct. 1-5 was Anti-Bullying Week at BHS. This year the school did things a little differently.

During this year the staff allowed different student groups to get involved with the Anti-Bullying Week activities. One of these groups was the Spanish four class.

“I thought it was awesome that my Spanish 4 students got so involved,” Spanish teacher Katie Marten said. “When the counselors approached me to see if my Spanish four class would like to get involved with Bullying Awareness Week, I honestly didn’t know if they would be interested at all.  When the counselors presented the idea to the class, they were pretty quiet and unresponsive.  However, once the counselors left, I was very surprised that the class continued the discussion on its own, and the majority of the class seemed very involved and interested in the topic.  I was extremely impressed and very proud that the class took on several projects, like the videos and surveys. Some students contributed way more than was expected, and I truly appreciate that.”

The staff was pleased with the effect the student involvement had throughout the week.

“I think having the Bully Awareness Week be student driven worked extremely well,” counselor Melody Hoffsommer said. “Students had a lot of great ideas and worked hard to make the week a successful one.”

The Spanish four class made a survey that students filled out in seminar and then gathered the results and presented them to the school later on in the week. Once the data was collected 66% of the senior girls said they had been bullied, this was the highest percentage. 93% of BHS girls said they had been bullied through gossip.

“I’d like to say I was surprised by the results, but I really wasn’t,” Marten said. “Hearing that roughly half of the students admitted to being bullied was actually lower than what I expected. What did surprise me was the high percentage of girls who admitted to being bullied via gossip (93%). I knew the actual number was high, but to have that many girls admit it on a survey was surprising.”

The students and staff who were involved hope that Anti-Bullying Week will get students thinking about how their actions effect others.

“At the very least, we hopefully got students and staff thinking about the issue of bullying, even if only for a few days,” Marten said.