Victimized: the psychology of bullying

Cupcakes are stacked on a platter, the words, “We hated him,” in loopy green icing across the top. Balloons and party hats are scattered around the room, with posters on the walls screaming similar messages.

The room rings with laughter as the party gets started.

This is the image that Clarke Central High School junior John Hudgins* saw when he pictured his funeral.

“They told me, ‘If you ever die, we’re not going to go to your funeral; we’re going to host the biggest party ever.’ I imagined them throwing a party. I imagined them happy. I imagined them having cupcakes that said, “We hated (John),” Hudgins said.

Hudgins, by his own admission, was a victim of bullying.

The CCHS student agenda book, which is in accordance with Georgia State law, states that, “‘Bullying’ is defined as (1) any willful attempt or threat to inflict injury on another person when accompanied by an apparent present ability to do so; or, (2) any intentional display of force such as would give the victim reason to fear or expect immediate bodily harm.’”

University of Georgia’s College of Education Dean Andy Horne has dedicated the majority of his academic career to researching and studying bullying and its many facets. After publishing several bullying prevention books, Horne, based on his findings, feels that bullying can be defined by three characteristics.

University of Georgia's College of Education Dean Andy Horne has spent years researching bullying. "If a kid expects to be harassed at school every day, then it becomes premeditated fear," Horne said. "They live in a state of fear which is just overwhelming."

“First, (bullying) is intentional. The second thing is, there is some form of imbalance of power so that the bully (bullies), expecting to be able to get away with it because they are smarter, bigger, richer or whatever they are,” Horne said. “The third thing is, it is very often repeated; they do it over and over.”

For Hudgins, bullying wasn’t introduced into his life until his move to Athens, Ga. at the start of fifth grade. On his first day at his new school, Hudgin’s mother asked him to wear a new silk shirt, marking the beginning of his victimization.

“When I got to Athens, I was just a really loud, know-it-all kid wearing a silk shirt. I was the first kid in class, and there was this girl I thought was kind of cute, so I said, ‘Hey,’ and she goes, ‘You’re gay,’ and sits down,” Hudgins said. “I had never been called gay in my life; I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew what she meant by her tone of voice.”

From that day onward, Hudgins was tormented by the majority of his classmates. While he was often labeled with cruel names, the silent treatment by his classmates had lasting effects, as well.

“(Shunning) is almost a cruel study in psychological misbehavior; it’s a way of ostracizing somebody to just see if you can do it,” Horne said. “You’re young, you’re an adolescent and you’re trying out new skills, so you think, ‘What can I do? How powerful can I be?’”

Similar to Hudgin’s bullies, junior Charlotte Lee and her friends tested their superiority by bullying another group of girls at their elementary and middle school. However, Lee admits the group rarely felt remorse for their actions.

“I have made girls cry. I’m not going to say I haven’t,” Lee said. “(In elementary and middle school), we’d do that whole fake, ‘I’m sorry’ to try to make us feel better — I guess to help us sleep better at night. But when it comes down to it, it was really like we didn’t care.”

Horne, while hoping to better understand bullies’ and victims’ mindsets, has worked with nine middle schools in the area, including Burney-Harris Lyons, Clarke and W. R. Coile Middle Schools.

That specific study demonstrates that victims can be targeted by bullies for things such as their race, gender and hairstyle or clothing style. However, most bullies choose their victims similarly to how a lion chooses which zebra to hunt down — by picking the weakest of the heard.

“(Bullies) can say, ‘I’m going to attack that person because no one is going to help them,’” Horne said. “We’ve learned that the bullies are better at predicting who will be better taken care of and supported than the teachers are, that the bullies can just zero right in, or they’ll try something and if nobody steps up to help, then they’ll go, ‘Okay, I’ve got an open door; I can step right in and do whatever I want to.’”

Validating Horne’s observations, Lee’s group targeted girls that they knew had a limited support system by writing them fake love letters, sending hate notes and putting things in girls’ seats to ruin their clothing.

“We didn’t like (the girls we bullied); we didn’t like what they did, what they thought, how they looked. We broke them down,” Lee said. “It was like lions and zebras — how lions go for the zebra that is alone. They really didn’t have any way to retaliate because we had them cornered.”

By definition, Lee’s group bullied the girls at their elementary and middle school. Hudgins, who was victimized daily, was often told to disregard the hateful words of bullies like Lee.

“I tried to ignore it, but when you have five kids surrounding you, telling you, ‘You’re stupid, you’re gay, you’re ugly. No one will ever like you, we hate you,’ you start to believe it,” Hudgins said. “Even if you have your parents telling you you’re not, you start to see yourself as that. I thought what they were saying was true.”

UGA's College of Education Dean Andy Horne spent most of his academic career conducting studies on bullying and the effects it has on those involved. One of the most affected is the victim. "(Victims) start incorporating the harrassement into their self identity," Horne said. "They think (the names they are called) are true."

As bullying continues, most victims, like Hudgins, begin questioning themselves rather than their bullies, determining that, because they are being targeted, it must be their fault. Horne considers this victim mentality a large contribution to the lasting effects of bullying.

“People start incorporating the harassment into their self identity; they start thinking of themselves that way if enough people do it,” Horne said. “(The victim) sees that other students are not being picked on, and they really dwell on (what’s happening to them), as if it were their fault. That’s one of the big problems with the victims of bullies — they do attribute bullying to themselves.”

At the study conducted at CMS, Horne and collaborative researchers interviewed 100 students who identified themselves as either bullies or victims of bullying. Through his questioning, he found logical answers about the abusive system.

“One of the bullies we worked with at CMS said, ‘Every kid wishes there wasn’t bullying, but if it’s going to happen, I’m going to be the bully. I don’t want to be the victim.’ And yeah, that makes sense,” Horne said.

Similar to the bully Horne questioned, Lee felt that she was protecting herself from being attacked by attacking others.

“It was the girls in the group pressuring me into doing things as part of us bullying people — being bullied into bullying,” Lee said. “It wasn’t like there was one girl who said, ‘You have to go do this.’ It was more so you could stay and not become the next target.”

In 2001, 44 percent of students in sixth through 10th grade across the U.S. admitted to bullying others, according to a survey conducted by Dr. Tonja R. Nansel of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Bathesda, Maryland.

Despite this statistic, CCHS takes measures against bullying within its halls. If an incident is reported by a faculty member, parent or student, the student’s respective counselor is immediately notified. However, counselors often must pass the claim to administrators, depending on the circumstances and the severity of the bullying.

“We start first by just trying to talk to the (bully), and it usually goes away. If there are repeated incidents, it becomes an administrative issue,” Counseling department counselor Lenore Katz said. “The administrators do the talking, and they do the consequences if it really escalates.”

Once administrators are informed, they investigate further and determine what consequences, if any, the accused student will face.

“First, we investigate the case. We talk to the alleged victim and get their point of view on (the situation), and then (we) interview other students in the class to see what’s actually going on,” Assistant Principal Reginald Thomas said. “We want to make sure we have both sides of the story — the whole story — before we decide what action needs to be taken.”

While the administrative team has an established policy and process for handling bullying incidents, Principal Dr. Robbie Hooker feels that process cannot take place if students do not come forward.

“Don’t hesitate. Always come to an administrator or a security (guard) or a teacher. Let us be aware. Don’t let the bullying get too far,” Hooker said. “If we don’t know anything, we’re blindsided.”

Despite counselor and administrator intervention and Hooker’s encouragement to speak up, there are some who feel they have seen little result from the mediatory and disciplinary process.

“(My counselor) talked to (the person bullying me), but she denied everything,” junior Karen Seymore* said. “It makes me feel bad because when the counselor talks to her, she just denies it — she just denies it all the time.”

While Seymore feels her bullying case is difficult to eliminate, she is not alone. CCHS has a zero-tolerance bullying policy within its hallways, however, an alternative form of harassment takes place over the Internet. This cyber bullying is difficult for administrators to eliminate as it invades students’ homes.

Cyber bullying is defined as the “willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices,” according to the Cyber Bullying Research Center’s website.

Because the harassment occurs outside of school, administrators have little ability to take action unless it impedes upon the victim’s education.

“When we hear about cyber bullying, we’re not quiet about it. We take it to administration — we address it as much as we can,” Katz said. “You can deal with someone one-on-one when it happens in a school and have a discussion, and you can be informed, but if it gets out of hand and it’s on Facebook, real harm can be done; it can be daunting.”

Horne attributes the frequency and increasing severity of cyber bullying to the fact that bullies utilize computers as masks, keeping their identities concealed.

“Around the country, cyber bullying has just escalated and has caused such problems … It’s a horrible invasion,” Horne said. “It’s kind of like how alcohol can make someone feel uninhibited; well, the Internet is like that — it makes (bullies) feel uninhibited.”

While cyber bullying may seem effortless and anonymous to most bullies, the use of the Internet provides parents, school officials and police officers the evidence needed to expose them.

“We often think that the Internet is anonymous,” Horne said. “But (police officers) are able to track the e-mails and messages to see who sent them, and that can wind up ending really seriously.”

Due the ability to track cyber bullying and the strong consequences that ensue, Lee’s group did not bully over the Internet.

“The thing with cyber bullying, as opposed to bullying in person, is that you can’t say, ‘Well, she said this.’ In cyber bullying you can print it out. It’d be like, ‘Well, here’s proof; she said this,’” Lee said. “I think we were conscious of that, so we didn’t do anything online just because of that.”

The consequences of cyber bulling, as well as physical bullying in school, can result in a student being removed from their current school — something Lee wanted to avoid.

According to Georgia state law, “Local board policy shall require that, upon a finding by the disciplinary hearing officer, panel or tribunal of school officials provided for in this subpart that a student in grades six through 12 has committed the offense of bullying for the third time in a school year, such student shall be assigned to an alternative school.”

Hudgins recalls being choked, kicked, spat on, punched and pushed around frequently; however, the bullies never faced more severe consequences than In-School Suspension.

It is common for bullies to force their victims into isolation, mentally and physically from their classmates. "(Shunning) is almost a cruel study in psychological misbehavior; it's a way of ostracizing somebody to just see if you can do it," UGA's College of Education Dean Andy Horne said. "You're young, you're an adolescent and you're trying out new skills, so you think 'What can I do? How powerful can I be?'"

“I felt like everyone was bigger than me, that everyone stared down at me, so I knew if I hit them back they would just hit me back harder,” Hudgins said. “I didn’t like getting punched, so I didn’t hit back.”

Hudgins ignored the attacks until they became more severe than usual.

“I went to get (something that was dropped on the ground) and this guy pushed a metal chair onto my head,” Hudgins said. “(After that), I ran to my dad crying, and I said, ‘I can’t take it anymore, Dad, I can’t take it.’ I just couldn’t. That was the last straw.”

Although Hudgins never stayed home to avoid the harassment he faced at school, an average of 160,000 students across the country stay home from school each day to avoid being bullied, according to the National Center for Bullying Prevention website.

“If a kid expects to be harassed at school every day, then it becomes premeditated fear,” Horne said. “The victims live in a state of fear which is just overwhelming.”

Senior Mitchell Talmadge* is one of those 160,000 victims, but faces consequences from both his parents and administrators when he skips.

“Why can’t students who are being bullied stay home? I often skip school to get rid of the bullying, but then I get chewed out by my parents and get notifications from the campus that I wasn’t there,” Talmadge said. “I don’t want to go to school and deal with it.”

Horne feels that Talmadge’s pleas are reasonable and urges schools to become safer environments if state laws require student attendance up to the age of 16.

“If you have a law that says you have to go to school, then by definition it should be a safe place for you because the law makes you be there,” Horne said. “You can’t have a law that makes someone be someplace that is unsafe, so it’s (the school’s) responsibility to provide safety for students, and I feel very strongly that that is how it should be.”

Though Horne believes there should always be a better option than changing schools or dropping out, he understands why parents often take such actions.

“Parents have a responsibility and a right to take care of their kids, so if they’re in an environment that’s dangerous or harmful, they need to do something,” Horne said. “Ideally, you change the environment. If you can’t, you take the kid out.”

According to Lee, two girls moved away from her school when the harassment would not cease.

“I was a lot younger, and I didn’t make the connection. (The fact that I was bullying) did register, but we were just happy to have them gone because we wanted them gone,” Lee said. “I have to say that after they left I had a great eighth grade year. And that’s terrible.”

Lee and her group’s victimization of others waned as middle school graduation drew closer.

“Usually, starting in kindergarten, the bullying goes up every year until about eighth grade — eighth grade is usually when it is the worst — then it starts going down in high school,” Horne said. “Some of the bullies drop out of school, a number of the victims drop out because they never find a safe place to be and then a number of the bullies figure out that if they want friends, they better stop their behavior.”

Likewise, when Hudgins decided to transfer schools during his eighth grade year, the bullying he faced at his previous school stopped.

“Hold your chin high and move to a new school. The way I escaped was by going to a new school,” Hudgins said. “I ran away. I didn’t know what else to do.”

Clarke Central High School junior Charlotte Lee* and her friends admitted to being bullies in both elementary school and middle school. According to Lee, the victims decided to move as a result of their bullying. For Lee, this was the desired outcome. "We were just happy to have them gone because we wanted them gone," Lee said. "I have to say that after they left I had a great eighth grade year. And that's terrible."

While bullying may seem to naturally subside, Horne has tested prevention methods at many high schools throughout the country in an attempt to find a more definite solution to bullying. However, prevention proves impossible if students are unwilling to respond when witnessing victimization.

“Bystanders often don’t step up because they’re afraid that if they step up they’ll be hurt, which is a possibility,” Horne said. “They’re also thinking, ‘Well, (the victims) must deserve it.’ Another reason is because they think it’s an adult’s job to fix it, not their job.”

Clarke County School District Superintendent Dr. Phillip Lanoue feels that it should be a question of whether or not people are going to allow bullying in their environment.

Sharing the same sentiment, Horne is developing ways to support bystander discouragement of bullying.

“Part of what (collaborative researchers and I) try to do is find a way to empower the bystanders because 50 percent of the time, it stops right there,” Horne said. “The bullies don’t want to be singled out or isolated by their peers.”

Horne feels a bully’s desire to please and persuade peers can be manifested in positive behavior if that option is presented.

“Give them an opportunity to be influential in some other way. Let people exert their power in a positive way,” Horne said. “I truly believe that you can turn (the bullying problem) around quickly.”

Despite Horne’s optimism and efforts towards the prevention of bullying, he feels it is a continuum, that there is a lasting impact on the bully, the bystanders and the victim.

“Our whole effort is how to prevent it from happening,” Horne said. “Bullying doesn’t go away. Bullying is a life-long memory.”

Even though the bullying has subsided, Hudgins’ fears of being targeted once again keep him from defending other victims.

“I can see (the kids that are bullied): their heads are down, pointed at the floor, and I remember having my head just like that. There’s nothing in their eyes almost; they look sad. You look at them and you know how they feel,” Hudgins said. “I don’t know what to do for them, I don’t. Once you’ve been bullied and you see another kid get bullied, you don’t want to help because you don’t want to be back at that place.”