Community to battle bullying

By Janice Kurbjun
Times staff writer

A kid leans forward in his chair and drops gum into the hair of the girl sitting one row up.
Another kid won’t go to the bathroom for the eight hours he’s at school. A handful of others are afraid to go to their lockers. All these cases instill fear in one person, power in another and a chain reaction throughout the community, Dave Dingman said.

Dingman is a Carbon County District 1 School Board member, but he said he’s speaking out about bullying because he’s a concerned community member.

Bullying is not unique to Rawlins, nor does it only occur with children. Anything involving one person exerting power over another because it makes them feel good constitutes bullying, Dingman said. According to this definition, bullying includes anything from littering to domestic violence. However, recent efforts in Carbon County to combat bullying focus on helping children and their parents find resources to handle the issue.

According to an article by Dr. Michael B. Green, “Violence committed on school grounds often derives from conflicts that emerge in the community.” Understanding the connection, Dingman and others pushed for the formation of a community-based committee to respond to bullying in schools. The group is now known as Safe Schools, Safe Homes, Safe Community. After receiving a grant in October, the committee has been able to connect with the statewide SAGE Initiative. Aiming to provide support, access, growth and empowerment, the program gathers social agencies under one roof to better service communities.

“When a mother has a depressed child, she can appeal to this program to get help,” Carbon County School District 1 Curriculum Director Marilyn Vercimak said.

Getting help should be easier for parents since the committee aims to streamline each agency’s application process. Vercimak expects there to be more demand for services since more people will be aware of them.

She believes the expansion of the original committee is crucial to community involvement not just in bullying but in other areas of parenting. “It’s hard nowadays,” she said.

Though Vercimak and Dingman, who are spearheading the community effort against bullying, are also associated with the school district, they emphasized that the issue is not solely a concern for the schools. “Should the schools adopt these kids?” Dingman asked. Since Dingman believes bullying is a learned behavior, it makes sense to him to address it wherever learning takes place, including the community. Vercimak pointed out that the school already has a list of responses to bullying while the community’s response efforts are lacking.

Safe Schools, Safe Homes, Safe Community expects to hold educational meetings for teachers and community members on how to handle bullying in the coming weeks. “If you handle it well, it goes away,” Vercimak said. She expects to start receiving funding from the SAGE Initiative once the committee receives training from representatives in Laramie.