When the editor at the Hartford Business Journal receives one of my extraordinary columns, his voice reverberates throughout the newsroom. “This ‘Cohen’ guy is a God.”
The reaction from the staff? They roll their eyes, in a mean, bullying kind of way. Big bunch of bullies. When one of them “spills” coffee on me during the day, I know what’s going on. Big bunch of bullies. When one of them stabbed me accidently with a letter opener, he apologized profusely, but I got the sense he didn’t really means it — and it wasn’t an accident
When they whisper that I’m only 85 percent as handsome as George Clooney, they’re being very hurtful.
I’d complain, but newsrooms are full of jokes and teasing and the occasional stabbing. How does the boss differentiate between playful banter and the acidic bullying of a jealous staff? If the boss ordered everyone to stop bullying, what exactly would change?
That’s a point that state Department of Education consultant Jo Ann Freiberg made at one of those earnest forums on bullying. She urged at least a tweaking of the vocabulary, because folks don’t relate to “bullying.” Don’t be mean; don’t be unkind and, of course, as she mentioned, don’t roll your eyes (I know about that one.).
The forum at the Hartford Public Library featured the usual litany of first-person reporting by victims of “bullying,” but in some ways, the examples only emphasized the murky nature of the anti-bullying agenda. The anti-bullying fervor, spurred in large parts by a few horrific suicides by young victims, is long on energy, but short on precision, either legal or intellectual.
When the kids at the forum talk about getting pushed down the stairs or attacked by a crowd, they are talking about what in the adult world is labeled disorderly conduct or assault and battery. On the more benign end of the range, eye-rolling may be mean — but what exactly is the activity that would require school officials to unleash the anti-bullying bulldogs, short of calling the cops to report a crime?
The General Assembly is prettying up yet another piece of anti-bullying legislation — this one aimed at cyber-bullying, which is to say, sending mean or embarrassing electronic messages. Of course, the bill will pass — in large part, because the school officials are reluctant to express their doubts out loud.
Much of this bullying legislation and regulation and unofficial rule-making are a shaky assault on free speech; lack any pretense of due process; and often lack a precision that would allow it to survive a legal challenge based on vagueness.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut has been publicly cranky about the broadness and fuzziness of the school-based anti-bullying legislation already on the books — and school officials in many towns will privately confess that there is little enthusiasm to become anti-bullying police, until the sin becomes something on the order of assault and battery, with clear evidentiary boundaries.
As of this writing, the proposed expansion of the Connecticut legislation would include cyber-communication out of school, as well as a definition of bullying that would frown upon bullying that creates “a hostile environmentˆ “
The focus on legislating chores for school officials to perform is perhaps misguided. More appropriate would be a focus on effective therapy for those being targeted — and a reasonable set of guidelines and training for school officials — some of whom have shown themselves to be lazy, indifferent, or clueless
Bullying is often subtle, sometimes cruel, and often trivial. To create a hodgepodge, legal nightmare for schools to enforce will create bureaucratic evasion and cynicism.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
