Delaware tackles bullying on the web

Just in time for the new school year and October which is also known as national bullying prevention month, a unique resource designed to help students, parents and educators better deal with various bullying scenarios has hit the world wide web. 

Gov. Jack Markell, D-Del., who signed legislation to increase reporting any incident related to bullying, tells newsworks reporters the website, Deletebullying.org came about due to the collaborative work of several public and private organizations that teamed up with the Delaware Bar Foundation.

Jackie Mette, executive director of the Delaware Bar Foundation says the decision to put the website together came in response to multiple bullying incidents that resulted in suicide. And although a number of resources were already available to Delawareans, Mette says there was a need for something to incorporate all of them in one spot. 

Meanwhile, the Attorney General’s office was also involved with the effort to crack down on bullying. In fact, officials noted 160-thousand kids who are bullied skip school every day because they are afraid to go, and about one million of them are bullied online. But that’s not all.

“One out of three middle and high school kids report being bullied. The effect this is having not only on our children psyche but on their educational experience can not be understated,” says Patricia Daily Lewis who works closely with Attorney General Beau Biden.

“I’ve been in classrooms all my life where people were bullied for their clothes, hair or whatever the case maybe but I’ve always been a bystander until my later years,” says Howard High School student Barbara Barnhart.

As for the website, there’s a video that illustrates a number of bullying scenarios and how to handle such incidents. Students from Howard High School of Technology were apart of the film since it’s Delaware’s first bully-free school where everyone there signed a no-bully pledge. That pledge even helped Barbara Barnhart, become a new person by taking a stand against bullying. 

“I’m so involved because actually I witnessed bullying a lot growing up and I’ve always been like a quiet one but I realized that if you don’t say anything then nobody else is going to say anything, you have to start by taking a stand and being a leader because no one else is going to do it, if somebody else doesn’t start it,” says Barnhart.