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Bullying, Harassment and Violence Among Students
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Our nation's elementary and secondary schools are filled with abundant examples of studentto-student gender-based harassment and violence. Despite requirements for compliance and monitoring articulated in state and federal laws, and continuing guidance issued by federal agencies and the federal courts on federal law Title IX, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1972 to eliminate sex discrimination in educational institutions that receive federal financial assistance (nearly all public K-12 schools and all public and private universities/colleges), contemporary surveys attest to the ugly entrenchment of sexual and gender harassment in our schools (AAUW, 1993, 2001; Human Rights Watch, 2001; GLSEN, 2005). But sexual or genderbased harassment rarely show up in any of the standard analyses of school violence. Gender is missing.
This essay considers the erasure of gender- and sexuality-based harassment that occurs when schools frame all violence as bullying, under the current post-Columbine regime known as "zero tolerance." The zero-tolerance mania, which disproportionately affects students of color, is part of the pervasive punitive ideology and social policy that also includes trying minors as adults, deterrence theories, and mandatory sentencing. Educators now include bullying behaviors under the evet-broadening umbrella of zero tolerance. Schools proudly state that they will not tolerate bullies; there are bullybuster posters around school buildings and new rules to covet bullying, and eradicating bullies is all the rage with state legislators, school officials, and consultants. Bullying, a psychological concept, has evolved to include any act of meanness, exclusion (i.e. saving a seat for a friend, or even uttering preference for one person over another), threats of any sort, as well as physical assaults.
The zero tolerance approach has taken over the good senses of the educational and legislative establishments. What has gotten lost in this surge of attention and new laws that impose a rather expansive notion of bullying...