Sarah Plavcan. Photo by Liz Schultz.
Sarah Plavcan is a first year law student at Harvard Law School. She is interning this summer at the American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware. Her op-ed below was published on 6/21/16 on Delawareonline.com
The General Assembly is currently considering House Bill 386, which would apply criminal penalties to bullying. It defines bullying broadly, including embarrassing another child. As someone who has been a victim of bullying, I want to add my voice as Delaware considers whether the best way to address bullying is through the criminal justice system.
The summer before third grade, I changed schools. I was new, socially awkward and cried easily. I was the perfect target for bullies. I came home crying almost every day for three years. Fourth grade was the worst. Every time I spoke, everyone in the class would start to laugh. For the rest of the day, my words would be passed back and forth like they were the funniest joke my classmates had ever heard. When I stopped talking, my silences were treated the same way.
I haven’t been bullied for many years, but I still carry the scars. Even now, I had to write this statement rather than speak directly to the House Judiciary Committee because I still have such difficulty speaking in public.
Despite my fear, I need to speak out against HB 386. I cannot let the pain I went through be used to justify harming more children in an effort that will not stop bullying.
Attempting to counter bullying with an overly broad criminal law will create immense collateral damage. The effects of arrest and conviction on a child are enormous. A month in jail and a $575 fine are no small thing, especially because school discipline already disparately impacts underprivileged children. The collateral consequences of that conviction can last for the rest of a child’s life.
The broad language of this bill, criminalizing anything that “places another in reasonable fear of substantial harm to his or her emotional or physical well-being” or “interfer[es] with a safe environment”, would criminalize conduct far beyond bullying. It would criminalize the students who stood up for me by threatening to ruin my bullies’ social reputations if they didn’t stop. It would criminalize the girls in sixth grade who asked me to stop sitting with their small, insular group at lunch; even though the request hurt my emotional well-being so badly, it was reasonable and they made it as gently as possible.
Adding new criminal punishments wouldn’t have stopped the bullying. No one was ever punished for what they did to me. And it wasn’t because my school didn’t have strict punishments for bullying. It was because even when teachers recognized that I was being bullied, they didn’t have the tools, or the time, to address it. It was because by the time I was in a school where the teachers might have listened, I had learned that reporting would only make the bullying worse – especially if the bullies were punished.
We know how to stop bullying. My bullying ended because some of my classmates finally intervened to make it stop. Research shows that this kind of community-based conflict resolution is how we can reduce bullying in our schools. We know how effective restorative justice practices can be. We know how effective students themselves can be, when given the knowledge and skills to intervene – just like my classmates finally did for me.
This bill provides no tools for teachers to recognize bullying or to ensure it gets reported and addressed. It does nothing to deal with the reality that most perpetrators of bullying are themselves victims, either of bullying from their peers or abuse at home. It provides only the false hope that ever more severe punishments will somehow prevent bullying.
When I was crying on the bus, I didn’t need, or want, my bullies to be punished. I just wanted them to stop hurting me.
We are already punishing children, both in school and out, regardless of whether that punishment is proportionate or productive. We do not need another law that throws children in jail instead of addressing the fundamental problems that allow bullying to persist.
Don’t use the harm done to me to excuse harming other children. Don’t use my pain to justify a bill that won’t do anything to help kids like me.
