Anti-bullying campaigner wins Tikkun Olam Award

 

By Donald H. Harrison

CORONADO, California –A student who once was bullied has established what President Theodore Roosevelt might have called a “bully pulpit.”  Starting at Coronado High School, spreading to La Jolla High School, and now under consideration at other high schools and colleges in California and Arizona, Voices Against Cruelty, Hatred and Intolerance (VACHI) is a club and internet site that encourages witnesses to speak up when they see bullying, and school administrators to adopt clear policies prohibiting bullying.

For his efforts, Joseph “Joe” Langerman was awarded a $10,000  Spirit of Anne Frank scholarship last year, and this year he is the recipient of a $36,000 Diller Teen Tikkun Olam Award.  Soon to enter his second year at the University of Redlands, but with enough academic credits to be classified as a junior, Langerman is pursuing studies in politics, law and media and has been accepted for a Washington D.C. internship and study program next semester, which he hopes will further his campaign against hate.

Back in 2010, Langerman won a $1,000 Coyne Reitnouer Scholastic Achievement Award presented  to students who had overcome learning disabilities.  According to Joe’s mother,  an ear infection when Joe was 2 years old impacted language processing centers in his brain, ultimately resulting in him  losing the hearing in one ear.

In an interview after being named a Diller Teen winner, Langerman was hesitant to be too specific about the types of bullying he personally had to endure, but he did say: “I was called a lot of nasty names and as a result it was a very dark place in my life and I haven’t been in that dark place since.”

His mother,  Amy Langerman, practiced law in Phoenix, Arizona, before moving 10 years ago to Coronado where she established a  new career as an educational advocate for students dealing with such disabilities as dyslexia and autism.  She said rather than see her son “wallow” in that dark place, she told him “you are the smartest person I have ever met and it is time for you to use your brain to figure out how to fix this, because nothing that has been done so far  has fixed this.  I can’t fix it for you, so figure out how to fix it.”

Joe went on the Internet to research bullying and found quite a bit of material about the behavior of people who witness bullying.  He decided that encouraging the bystanders to speak up, and to not acquiesce when they see instances of bullying, would be a productive way to proceed.

Accordingly, Joe first recruited some friends studying in the Coronado School for the Arts (COSA), a program within the high school involving acting and other types of performance. Like the students in the television series, Glee,  COSA students often are the subject of insults, according to Joe. Five students enthusiastically agreed to help him organize VACHI, enabling Joe to go to the Associated Student Body and then to principal Karl Mueller to ask for official school club status. After that was granted, Joe began publicizing the club with announcements through school channels and in the Coronado Eagle.  VACHI “grew exponentially,” said Joe.  “It got over 100 members” in a school of 1100 students. “Of these, perhaps 25 students regularly attended meetings.”

The club decided to conduct a survey regarding the extent of bullying at Coronado High School. With the administration’s approval, questionnaires were distributed in every English class. English is a required subject in all grades so that was a way to assure all students were covered.

One of the key questions asked whether students had ever been harassed or called names, and another sought to determine whether students believed the administration should do more to combat bullying.

“The results were daunting,” Joe reported.  “They were a lot worse than I actually expected. I thought the numbers were going to be big but I didn’t think they were going to be like this. Up to 60 percent of the students had been bullied on the basis of actual or perceived orientation.”  And to the question of whether the school district was doing enough, the answer was “an overwhelming no.”

After the results were calculated, Joe gave a talk to the faculty under somewhat stressful circumstances.  The administration had instructed him to stick to an approved script, somewhat handcuffing him.  However, he said, once he finished reading his paper, questions came quickly from the faculty.  They wanted to know what they could do, and Joe was able to make a recommendation that he hadn’t addressed in his paper.  He suggested a “first offender” program, “where after someone bullied or name-called the first time, (he or she) would be referred to the administration and the remedy would not be punitive, but corrective, or rehabilitative.

“For example, writing an essay about bullying or reading a book about bullying–doing something that doesn’t involve punitive action,”  Joe explained. For first offenders, Joe indicated that suspension, detention or Saturday school was too harsh a penalty.  “Obviously if that behavior was repeated over and over again we felt that punishment was absolutely appropriate but when it happened the first time we felt that rehabilitative, corrective measures were more appropriate.”

Teachers responded enthusiastically to the idea, but the administration became unresponsive, according to Joe.  “It was like a black curtain was drawn over discipline; they were very secretive. They didn’t tell me what they did to correct this behavior, or what they did when they got referrals.”   He said all he was told was that discipline was not a matter for students to decide.

Dissatisfied, Joe went to the Coronado School Board to report on the survey to its members, and to discuss what he saw as gaps between what state law required of schools and actual practice. For example, he said, “sexual orientation” was not mentioned in Coronado’s school board policy dealing with bullying.

Amy Langerman, Joe’s mother, who joined us during the interview at their home, said that “gay bashing” was one of the most common hate behaviors on the campus.  The attitude toward students enrolled in the school for the arts “was that everyone there must be gay— and not just them but also ROTC people were gay bashed,” she said.  “Everyone was gay bashed, that is what kids do nowadays, and it is very hurtful, especially when you may not know what your sexual orientation is.”   Joe urged the school board to not only ban discriminatory behavior on campus against “gays” but also against people who are “perceived” to be homosexuals, rightly or wrongly.

Because this meeting of the school board also dealt with the annual budget, including teacher salaries, it was a packed meeting, and Joe reported that he received an unexpected standing ovation from the audience.

As part of their English classes, students at Coronado High School keep daily journals and post weekly blogs, and questions about tolerance were inserted into that activity.

Another program sponsored by VACHI was “ties for tolerance,” which encouraged students on a particular day to all wear a tie to school–suits were not required.  Yet another was “No Name Calling Week”–a program that had been started elsewhere that VACHI adapted for Coronado High School.  The head of the history department at Coronado High School is Casey Tanaka, and he is also mayor of the City of Coronado.  He issued a proclamation giving official city recognition to No-Name-Calling Week.

More publicity came when the Coronado School of the Arts decided to give several performances of The Laramie Project,  the Moises Kaufman play about the aftermath of the murder of University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard, who was a homosexual.

Members of the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church, which pickets gays and Jews and lashes out against a variety of other groups throughout the United States, announced that they planned to picket the last performance of The Laramie Project, prompting Joe to organize a counter protest.  “Students came together and supported tolerance and acceptance” with such messages on their picket signs as “Hate is not a Coronado Value,”  an adaptation from a line in the play that says “Hate is Not a Laramie Value.”

With the street cordoned off and the Coronado police force ready for anything, the evening turned from tense to party-like, after the Westboro Baptist Church contingent did not appear after all.

“It was like the ’60’s: People were singing Kumbaya and Michael Row The Boat Ashore”  recalled Amy Langerman.

Students who were bullied sometimes would seek Joe out to tell him their troubles and to ask advice.  He said the first thing they should do is to tell the bully that such name-calling is not okay.  “If a person doesn’t tell an offender it’s not okay, the offender will think, ‘oh it’s okay, this person doesn’t have  a problem with it.”   And if the bully doesn’t back off, Joe said, confide in a trusted teacher or  “tell the administration about it, and if you are not satisfied with what they do, be a voice for change, as I have been.”

Statistically, he said, there are differences in the way high school boys bully each other and the way girls do. “Most bullying boys do is more in a physical sense, whereas the bullying girls do is more emotional,” he said.  Girl bullies tend to exclude or spread rumors about victims “behind their backs” whereas boys “are more in their face.”

Now, having been at the University of Redlands for a year, Joe says the differences between high school and college are quite significant.  “College is not as clicky as high school,” he said.  “In college, students don’t have to give a damn about high school social expectations or rules; people are just themselves in college.”

Whereas some bullying occurs in colleges , “I wouldn’t say it is as prevalent as it is in high school.” he said.  “In high school it is a dominant presence, whereas in college it is, yes, present.

“High school fosters a setting, you have to be a certain way, you have to act a certain way,” Joe continued.  “There is a social ladder in high school, but when you are in college you are on your own, you are starting over.”

Joe said that one of his motivations for creating VACHI was the concept of tikkun olam that was an important part of his bar mitzvah studies at Congregation Beth Israel.  “Two big pillars are acceptance and tolerance and that definitely inspired me to accept people and be tolerant of people no matter who they are.”  Development of VACHI was also Joe’s Eagle Scout project.

Having watched Joe develop VACHI, being “his biggest fan,” and also being an advocate  for people with special needs, Amy Langerman occasionally is asked to give talks to parents of children about bullying.

“The first thing I tell parents {is} that they have to be a good role model because the reality is there is a lot of stuff that parents say and do that kids suck up and that they in turn do that is hateful.  They say things that are bad, they use language that is bad and they are perpetuating hate,” she said.

“The second thing is that if you start seeing signs that are very subtle–your children are late to school, not wanting to go to school, feigning illness, forgetting their homework so they are not focused on their work; they have signs of depression, or their grades drop generally or in one class because that is where they are being bullied, and they spend their time focusing on ‘how can I be safe in class’ instead of listening to the teacher, they (the parents) need to start the dialogue with their children.  It isn’t a question of saying ‘are you being bullied because these are children who won’t answer that question directly to anyone, including their parents. Ask questions such as ‘who are your friends?’ and ‘who are you having lunch with?’ or ‘who did you eat lunch with today?”  If they can answer that question, they may be sitting alone.”

She told of one parent who thinking his child might be bullied, decided to observe discreetly from his car parked near the area where the students ate their lunch.  He was amazed to observe through the fence that his child was sitting in a corner and not interacting with anyone.

Amy Langerman said one unofficial practice that needs to be ended by Coronado High School students is a tradition of entering freshmen being paddled by seniors who sometimes wear masks to hide their identity.  She told of one mother who said her child and two other children ran home as fast as they could through traffic to get away from older students pursuing them.

In announcing Langer as a recipient of the Diller Teen Award, the awarding foundation noted that  the awareness campaign led by Joe has, through Facebook, “created an international following. VACHI raises funding through in-kind donations and sales of t-shirts and wristbands Joe designed proclaiming that Hate Hurts. Joe is paying it forward, and continues to work to establish more chapters at surrounding high schools.”

Among those who recommended Joe for the award was Principal Mueller, even though they tangled over what might be appropriate disciplinary procedures for bullies.  Although they disagreed, Joe said, the disagreements were not personal in nature, but professional.

“I am very thankful for the Diller Foundation and especially for Mrs. (Helen) Diller for setting up this foundation,” Joe said.  “It has done some very good things, and I am thankful they came to the conclusion that I deserve to be recognized for the work I have done.  It really means a lot to be commended for doing something that is good.”

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com