This is a spinoff from the thread that discusses student suicides and bullying at prep schools.
I saw from the ABC news story with George Stephanopoulos that some parents at prep schools are interested in this topic and are demanding change from our schools in how these complaints are handled as a matter of routine. Our family is also deeply concerned.
Have prep schools considered the creation of a Chief Risk Officer role? Of course, the school would have to be able to afford this expertise, but particularly for high schools and colleges, it seems to be a resource that is both broadly needed and underutilized by the majority of institutions.
I have a high school junior at a school that has this role and indeed, the work of this department/individual is the number one reason why my DS has stayed at this high school. He has not been targeted by bullying in high school, but bystanders are negatively impacted by these issues, and I feel strongly that I want my children in environments where they are protected from damaging social dynamics and under-responsive administration. I am seriously considering enrolling my younger child in this same school for the same reason, even though he will have many other doors open to him based on his educational background.
I’m certain that parents with backgrounds in business will know this role. This is typically a person with advanced training in technology (CS/CIS BS or similar) and management experience or an advanced degree in management. They may have but do not require a law background. They consult with inside counsel in managing risk. Their technology background enables them to track anonymous posts on messaging apps with a strong degree of accuracy and assess and block external and internal virtual threats in real time. I am not credentialed in this manner, so I am not familiar with the tools that they use, but I know they are effective. I’ve seen them used effectively in my older son’s school with an ongoing online bullying incident very similar to the one described in the GMA story. The information that they gather empowers the HOS to accurately asses who is responsible for bullying/anonymous threats so that culprits can be held accountable in a more timely manner.
Schools need to modernize their threat assessment and response tactics as technology amplifies bullying rapidly and with dire consequences when it is allowed to do so without the proper accountability.
Thank you for sharing this - very interesting and I agree, these are the type of actions/changes schools should be looking to implement across all school types as “rumors” and “bullying” have been part of middle/high school forever and something different needs to happen to change that behavior/dynamic.
I also agree that these dynamics can also have a profound effect on empathetic individuals who are not directly involved but are peripherally involved or even just aware of what is happening. The ripple effects are wider than I think is commonly acknowledged.
Definitely sounds like a position that schools need, but my goodness the title Chief Risk Officer is almost nauseatingly corporate sounding and would be seriously off-putting to me if I was a parent with a child at that school. In corporate settings, risk officers are all about protecting the safety of the company, ie Chief A**-Coverer.
With some more touchy-feely branding, though, the role described above sounds like a position that would serve both the students and the school, particularly if it was focused on the online aspects of bullying etc. Kids these days feel “protected” by some of the vanishing technology on the apps they use, but if they knew that there was just a little bit of Big Brother action going on, it might give them pause. As mentioned in another thread, another huge deterrent to bullying in top schools would be the explicit rule that any student found to engage in bullying would have it reported in their disciplinary record and included in college applications.
A position like Risk Officer would need to exist in tandem with a Chief Wellness Officer, IMO.
You figured it out! I just took that from corporate, but I honestly don’t know the title of the person (or people) who do this at my DS’s high school. I only know that they exist and do their job well.
In our school’s similar incident, several students were circulating racist memes on a messaging platform (Discord). This was in 2020-2021. They were able to identify the source of the memes and acted swiftly to stop the meme-circulating. I don’t know what type of discipline was used with these students, but no offensive memes have been circulated on any of the three main messaging apps that the students use since that incident.
I’m so happy to see that this is being discussed, we have to talk about these problems at all levels. As individuals and as a country. In schools and universities.
I also would like to see things approached in a balanced way. It is easy to look at the “bullies” as “bad” but often things are not that black and white. Many times they are dealing with their own insecurities, anxieties, personal traumas etc. in this harmful way. These are still minors we are talking about and while I am all for accountability and discipline, it needs to be combined with education and getting to the root of things earlier, addressing them before they get out of control and teaching everyone healthier ways to deal with life’s challenges.
When I was a teacher, the best administrator I ever reported to facilitated contrived social circumstances where the bully and the target were required to relate to one another.
I used this when I taught in a private high school to dispel bullying in my classroom. It worked there, too. In one case I recall, I saw a student who had developed learned helplessness start to put forth effort in class. A person who had been mocking him started encouraging him. It’s very effective.
It’s about giving equal recognition to the humanity of each student in the bully/bullied dynamic and requiring them to recognize each other and work together toward a common goal.