By: Catherine Kirchhoff, Dignity in Schools Campaign

If you are:

The boy who goes to school wearing lipstick and gets bullied. The girl who was not expecting a racy photo she took for the boy she was dating to be forwarded to members of her class to result in receiving, “U R a slut” text messages. The student who gets made fun of by both educators and peers because she has same-sex parents. The student who was groped inappropriately by another walking down the hall.

Then you are:

One of the many young people directly impacted by this widespread phenomenon occurring in middle and high schools across the country.

David Crary, recently published an article titled,“Sexual Harassment Pervasive in U.S. Middle and High Schools, Survey Finds” that discussed the results of a survey conducted by the American Association of University Women, which questioned nearly 2,000 teens across the country. The results demonstrate that during the 2010-11 school year, 48 percent of students in grades 7-12 experienced some form of sexual harassment in person or electronically via texting, email and social media.

The students who were doing the harassing admitted that they felt their actions were “no big deal”, with eighty-three percent of admitted harassers saying they were just trying to be funny. However, their so-called funny actions often resulted in the bullied targets to “feel sick”, loose sleep or skip school. In other cases the bullied survey respondents shared that their perpetrators left them contemplating running away, or worse, committing suicide.

There are additional revealing findings in the report that are worrisome. Only half of  students who are being bullied are reporting it to adults; cyber-sexual harassment is spreading like wild fire; girls are more often the victims (46%), though boys (22%) are more often targeted with homophobic slurs, as was the case with Seth Walsh, a 13-year-old California boy who hanged himself after enduring taunts from classmates about being gay. Girls also reported more negative consequences: 37 percent said they did not want to go to school after being harassed, versus 25 percent of boys. Twenty-two percent of girls who were harassed said they had trouble sleeping, compared with 14 percent of boys; 37 percent of girls felt sick to their stomach, versus 21 percent of boys.

Additionally, these survey results signal an enveloping problem. While many communities and school districts focus on ineffective zero tolerance policies, it would be more beneficial to start looking in another sustainable direction: Anti-bullying laws and enforcing stricter policy crack downs on sexual harassment in any form. The respondent’s of this survey are real life individuals who were targets of harassment and as a result began skipping school, losing sleep, suffering stomachaches, and became depressed. Constantly battling these bullies could even result in these targets becoming part of the 1.2 million students who drop out of school each year. If we as educators, parents, and as individuals treat harassment as a joke, kids are going to do the same. It is a big deal, and should not be taken lightly. If students can begin to learn that fact through education and intervention programs at their age, then maybe they will grow up into adults who do as well.