Tragedy and Accountability
Schools should not be held responsible for student suicide
On July 27, Rockaway Township School District paid $9.1 million — “the largest settlement in a bullying case in New Jersey,” according to PBS — to the parents of Mallory Grossman: a sixth grader who committed suicide in 2017 after intense bullying.
Where did this bullying occur?
Mallory was “repeatedly bullied by other students in text and Snapchat messages,” as described by New York Times reporter Hurubie Meko. The Grossmans’ lawsuit details that their daughter was forced to hug her bullies and, when bullied during lunchtime, was directed to the counselor’s office to finish her meal.
Clearly, these responses to the in-school bullying of a sixth-grade girl are inappropriate and insufficient, respectively.
However, to claim that administrators were derelict in their responsibility to address bullying that occurred on-line, off-campus, and outside school hours goes too far—public school employees should have no jurisdiction or responsibility for what occurs outside of school.
Bullying is awful; it is a blatant violation of the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matt. 7:12). When teachers witness physical bullying on school property, they, or a school safety officer, properly respond by intervening and disciplining the offender. When teachers witness verbal abuse in their classroom, they are justified in sending the bully to the principal’s office.
When the students exit the school, they are children: Minors for whose safety and conduct parents — not school employees — are singularly responsible.
The Mallory parents have suffered an unimaginable tragedy. A tragedy that is certainly exacerbated by the immediacy, anonymity, and publicity of digital communication. The efforts they have undertaken to prevent such tragedies are admirable; the actual provisions of NJ S1790 (a.k.a. “Mallory’s Law”), I’m afraid, are objectionable.
One such provision is increasing the financial penalties for parents who fail to bring their child who has been “adjudicated delinquent of cyber-harassment” to attend anti-bullying classes. The bill increases the fine for a first offense from $25 to $100 and the $100 fine per subsequent offense to $500.
The fact that school officials can punish a child for extracurricular “cyber-harassment” and levy fines upon his parents when they refuse “to attend classes or training with the minor” should send chills down every civil-libertarian’s spine.
The bill also “requires a school district to provide a means for a parent or guardian to complete an online form to report an incident of harassment, intimidation, or bullying.” In-school bullying should be handled within the school and out-of-school bullying should be resolved between the guardians of the minors.
Instituting an anti-bully bureaucracy complete with online forms, hundred-dollar fines, and “a School Climate State Coordinator” is an inappropriate response to children misbehaving.