Bullying from a Different Perspective

As a writer, I’m always looking for places to write. My office was closed on President’s Day, so I found myself wandering the halls of California State University, Sacramento, my alma mater.

After sitting on a couch in the student union, I noticed quite a buzz in the reception area of the ballrooms. The marquee noted that it was the President’s Convocation General Assembly. I asked my fellow couch sitter what it was about. “It is supposed to be about bullying.”  Now there’s a topic that is on point with my next research assignment.

I'm covering cyberbullying for an upcoming Converge Special Report on mobility and security. I already attended a local school district presentation on the topic by a local U.S. attorney and an FBI agent (which was outstanding) and have another public forum from a city perspective scheduled on my calendar for this week. Now I had a trifecta with a local university covering the same topic. Could I be this lucky? 

Speaking of luck, I sat next to my former thesis advisor and teaching colleague who shared the context for the discussion. The convocation, she figured, was in response to the high number of sexual assaults in the past several months — seven in the last three months of 2010, to be exact.  If this was the context, it was never mentioned in the president’s introductory remarks or the keynote speech by Helen Zia, former editor of MS magazine and community activist. 

The theme was about fostering community, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt that everyone knew why they were there. Besides, even without a stated context, who could be against coming together as a community? 

Because I skipped out on the breakout sessions, I missed earning free snacks and a cool black T-shirt with the clever white lettering saying “one community.” This must have accounted for the high turnout of students, along with the professors in the audience taking roll to assign participation credit.

The president led the presentation by saying that bullying occurs at all levels. This was thought-provoking because I had not stopped to think of bullying in the higher education context. I associate the term “bully” with the K-12 experience, and terms like hazing, harassment or getting jumped and assaulted in parking structures is more freely associated as one moves up in educational years.

Because I write about educational technology, I kept waiting for references to the great Web 2.0 and all its social networking abilities. I wanted to hear the good and bad sides of how this plays out across university campus networks. That's something I’ve been asking every CIO and interviewee over the past few months. 

Outside of one casual statement the keynote presenter made about increased use of technology, there weren't any references. This seemed particularly odd since the subtitle on the screen was “fostering community.” It seemed an oversight not to talk about the technological impact of mediated communication as a community catalyst. 

I contacted CSUS to ask for more information about the event in case I missed something. John Kepley with the Public Affairs Office for the university shared that the focus was deliberately broad to encourage students and the community to share not one type of bullying behavior (already I felt ashamed for my singular focus), but to share other types such as racism or sexism.

In the breakout sessions, students were asked to talk about a time in which they felt marginalized, bullied, harassed, unwelcomed, devalued or unappreciated. With the help of skilled facilitators, all of this talk was converted into a list of actionable items reflecting back on these varied experiences to appreciate diversity and better “foster community.” 

I was disappointed that the assembly missed the opportunity to focus on how our communication patterns and behaviors have changed because of the increased use of technological advances. But perhaps I had my own hidden agenda. When I write these special reports, I put on the proverbial glasses of whatever topic I am after and gather anything related to it. 

Maybe technology didn’t belong in this conversation. After all, face-to-face communication was how we got here in the first place. And while everyone was sharing stories and experiences in conference rooms, I left early to pound out my interview notes on my netbook. Maybe I was the one who missed the point. 

When the final items get typed up and the President’s Office releases the final report to the public, I’ll scour them for references to the technological age. As we know, our interconnected world of zeros and ones do indeed add up to “ONE commUNITY,” albeit in a funny math sort of way. 

So, where is technology in discussions of community building? Maybe I should have put on my Matrix glasses and attended, “Where in the building is the community talking about technology?” Or better yet, “Where is the community in discussions about building technology?”  It’s all a matter of perspective.  

About the author: Kari Kelso is a senior analyst and lead writer for the Center for Digital Education's Converge Special Reports. She previously taught at three universities and managed the research and assessment departments of two large urban school districts.