In April of this year, in a small farming town in Iowa called Primghar, a 14-year-old boy hung himself in the family’s garage.  Kenneth Weishuhn had recently come out to his family, friends and on Facebook as gay. The relentless bullying and cyberbullying started soon thereafter, and a hate group called People Against Gays that targeted the young boy was created on Facebook.  Weishuhn had visited the People Against Gays page hours before he decided to take his life. This isn’t an isolated incident of cyberbullying leading to suicide.  In fact, only days before Weishuhn took his life, Grace McComas, a 15-year-old in Woodbine, Maryland took her own life after months of being the victim of an online bullying campaign.

Children around the world are choosing death rather than face a life of torment that not even their parents can help them escape.  And it’s not just children that partake in this dangerous pastime.  In 2006, there was the highly-publicized Megan Meier case.  The 13-year-old killed herself after being harassed on MySpace by a neighbor’s mother posing as a 16-year-old teenage boy.  This infrequent yet alarming suicide trend impacts children of all ages and backgrounds – from big cities to small towns – and not even “popular” kids are immune from becoming victims of cyberbullying.

Cyberbullying is a relatively new form of bullying taking a psychological rather than physical toll on victims.  A statistically significant portion of American youth has already been impacted.  Cyberbullying is similar to bullying but with new and more potent elements. The veil of anonymity, the ability to impersonate the victim, reach the victim at home, embarrass the victim in front of an unseen (and potentially vast) online audience and maintain the harassment on a 24/7 schedule is too much to bare for some, especially the young.  A 2008 Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Electronic Media and Youth Violence report indicates that somewhere between 9 and 35 percent of young people say they have been the victims of electronic aggression.  Furthermore, a Rochester Institute of Technology report states that cyberbullying can start as early as the 2nd grade for some children.

Not much data is available on how often kids get bullied because of their race, ethnicity, or national origin.  However, as anti-immigrant sentiment percolates in our country and anti-Latino hate crimes have increased, more Latino children are being harassed by their peers. In late 2011, the Associated Press reported that Departmet of Justice officials were monitoring for bullying incidents linked to the new Alabama (HB 56) anti-immigrant law. During a stop in Birmingham, Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division stated “We’re hearing a number of reports about increases in bullying that we’re studying.” The Justice Department has established a bilingual telephone hotline and special email account for Alabama residents to report any violence or threats based on racial or ethnic background that could be linked to the law. It is worth noting that when bullying based on race or ethnicity is severe, pervasive, or persistent it may be considered harassment, which is covered under federal civil rights laws.

Fortunately, the effects of bullying don’t usually end in suicides but they do have a dramatic impact on the victim’s life.  In 2011, the American Socialogical Association published “The Impact of School Bullying on Racial/Ethnic Achievement.”  According to the lead author of the study, Lisa M. Williams, the most striking aspect of the study is the considerable negative effect bullying has on the GPAs of high achieving black and Latino students.  According to the study, the effect of bullying is more evident for high achieving Latinos. Latino students with 3.5 GPAs in 9th grade, who were bullied in 10th grade, had 12th grade GPAs that were .5 points lower.

Although some parents may feel impotent in being able to protect their children from bullying and cyberbullying, they can make a difference.  The U.S. government website stopbullying.gov provides good information on bullying and cyberbullying.  Meanwhile some states have laws on the books that  offer protections from  bullying and cyberbullying.   Montana is the only state in the nation that has not adopted bullying laws and there are fifteen states that have adopted cyberbullying laws.  In 2008, the California state legislature passed one of the first laws in the country to deal directly with cyberbullying. The legislation gives school administrators the authority to discipline students who bully others offline or online.  Arkansas, Connecticut, Hawaii, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Utah and Washington have also adopted cyberbullying laws.

Assistant Attorney General Perez said:

“Today’s bullies are often tomorrow’s civil rights defendants. It’s important for schools to foster a learning environment where diversity isn’t just tolerated but embraced.”

But it’s not only schools. It’s at home, at work – it’s a state of mind.  And this appeal to embrace diversity is not just for whites. We all need to embrace our differences: the color of our skin, our religion, our sexual orientation.  As national bullying prevention awareness month comes to a close, let’s commit to make a difference on this issue.  Let’s get better informed about the dangers of bullying and cyberbullying, watch for the “signs” of both victim and aggressor, demand that our schools adopt and enforce bullying and cyberbullying policies, and go to the police if the problem escalates. No more playing nice guy to bullying. It’s a serious issue. Too many children are being psychologically tormented, and far too many children are taking their lives in desperation.  I’d rather be teased for being overly sensitive to bullying than find a nephew or niece dead in the garage. If we can all pull together and treat this problem with the seriousness that it deserves, many families and communities will be able to avoid unnecessary tragedy.