Bullying

Topic 2
TOPIC: Should colleges be required to prohibit bullying and harassment?
You should read and cite the following articles by Holt and Lukianoff if you choose this topic.
Pro position: Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., Written for CQ Researcher, November 2010 Parents send their children to college to learn, but the sad reality is that bullying and harassment affect millions of students on college campuses. It is unclear how widespread it is, but we know that harassment is happening based on race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and religion. It happens face-to-face, via e-mail, and on the Internet. Last September, Tyler Clementi, a talented freshman at Rutgers, committed suicide after two fellow students allegedly used a webcam to secretly watch him in a sexual encounter with another student. In the wake of Tyler 's suicide, his parents issued a statement saying, “Our hope is that our family 's personal tragedy will serve as a call for compassion, empathy and human dignity.” To help colleges and universities implement or strengthen their existing anti-harassment and anti-bullying programs, I joined Sen. Frank Lautenberg in introducing the Tyler Clementi Higher Education Anti-Harassment Act. The bill would require colleges and universities that receive federal student aid to have a clear code of conduct prohibiting the harassment of enrolled students based on their actual or perceived race, color, national origin, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or religion. Our legislation would recognize, for the first time, cyberbullying as a form of harassment at institutions of higher education.
Colleges would need to distribute their anti-harassment policy to all students, including instruction on what students and administrators should do if an incident of harassment occurs.
This would not be the heavy hand of the government telling students how to behave or restricting their speech. Rather, it would require that colleges publicly recognize that bullying is a real problem and have a policy to deal with it. The Tyler Clementi Higher Education Anti-Harassment Act complements other pending legislation in Congress, which I support. The Safe Schools Improvement Act would provide grants to states to collect and report information about bullying and act to prevent and respond to incidents of bullying and harassment. Another, the Student Non-Discrimination Act, would bar discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students in elementary and secondary schools. We cannot expect to completely eradicate bullying and harassment from our campuses, yet we should ask colleges and universities to set a standard to be not only places of learning, but also — in the words of Tyler 's parents — places of “compassion, empathy, and human dignity.” This will help students learn not only engineering, languages, accounting, or whatever their academic pursuits, but also learn how to get along in a diverse, interconnected society. Work Cited Holt, Rush. “Should colleges be required to prohibit bullying and harassment?: Pro.”
“Preventing bullying: Do anti-harassment laws violate students’ rights?” By Thomas J. Billitteri. CQ Researcher 20 (2010): 1013-1036. CQ Researcher. Web. 6 September 2012.

Con position: Greg Lukianoff, President, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Written for CQ Researcher, November 2010 Expanding the definition of “harassment” to punish hurtful or insensitive speech on college campuses has been tried again and again over the past three decades with disastrous consequences for free speech. Since the tragic recent suicide of Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi, whom authorities say took his own life following his roommate 's online broadcast of Clementi 's intimate encounter with another man, demands are on the rise for an expansion of the legal definition of harassment to protect college students from “bullying.” These demands, while understandable, are wholly misplaced. What happened to Clementi was, unsurprisingly, already a serious criminal offense for which the students involved have been charged and are facing prison time. Indeed, practically every serious behavior that could be labeled “bullying” is already an offense under laws and regulations dealing with stalking, vandalism, telephonic harassment and threats. Virtually every college in the country is required by federal law to have strong rules banning discriminatory harassment. Beginning in the 1980s, a movement to broaden harassment policies to prohibit offensive speech on campus produced countless outrageous incidents of censorship, intensified the campus culture war and provoked a steady stream of costly First Amendment lawsuits that the government consistently lost (at least 16 successful lawsuits since 1989). Yet these policies are still widespread; according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education 's 2010 study of nearly 400 universities across the country, 71 percent of schools maintain codes that clearly and substantially violate the First Amendment. While this percentage has been declining in recent years, a renewed effort to expand the definition of harassment would set the struggle for free speech on campus back by decades. Students already regularly face investigation and punishment for expressing dissenting views on controversial or political issues, for innocuous speech like parody or satire, or even for merely criticizing the campus administration. The irony is that a standard that effectively balances free-speech rights with the need to protect students from harassment has already been enunciated by the Supreme Court in a 1999 case, Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education (1999). This standard has been adopted by many institutions, including the entire University of California system. There is no need for additional legislation banning bullying or harassment on campus. Rather, the free-speech rights of college students are badly in need of increased protection. Work Cited Lukianoff, Greg. “Should colleges be required to prohibit bullying and harassment?: Con.”
“Preventing bullying: Do anti-harassment laws violate students’ rights?” By Thomas J. Billitteri. CQ Researcher 20 (2010): 1013-1036. CQ Researcher. Web. 6 September 2012.

Cited: Lukianoff, Greg. “Should colleges be required to prohibit bullying and harassment?: Con.” “Preventing bullying: Do anti-harassment laws violate students’ rights?” By Thomas J. Billitteri. CQ Researcher 20 (2010): 1013-1036. CQ Researcher. Web. 6 September 2012.