A bullying victim's advice: 'There is light at end of tunnel'

Wes Gately, a small sixth-grade student with glasses, stood in line with several of his classmates outside a Jardine Middle School classroom. The year was 2006.

Suddenly, several other students surrounded him.

“I felt like a caged animal,” said Gately, who is now 18 and a Washburn University student. “I had that ‘not again’ kind of feeling.”

Gately talked candidly about the incident in conjunction with Anti-Bullying Awareness Week. October is National Bullying Prevention month.

One of the Jardine bullies pushed Gately into a locker and was about to punch him in the face.

“It was fight or flight,” Gately said. “I shoved him, and I walked away.”

A teacher witnessed the incident, and Gately, along with the bully who pushed him, were both suspended from school. However, Gately’s parents called Jardine administrators to explain what had happened. Gately’s punishment was lessened to in-school suspension. But so was the bully’s punishment, Gately said.

Gately was bullied in grade school, too, but the time he spent at Jardine during the 2006-07 academic year was the worst, he explained.

“The school didn’t really do much,” he said.

Anti-bullying posters didn’t hang in the hallways of the school, he said.

“There were no programs,” Gately said. “Teachers didn’t say anything.”

There are laws now that require school boards to adopt a policy to prohibit bullying on school property or while utilizing school property, in a school vehicle or at a school-sponsored activity or event. Schools also have to adopt and implement a plan to address bullying.

Jardine was one of the last middle schools in Topeka Unified School District 501 to implement bullying-prevention programs prior to the law taking effect, said Rosanne Haberman, coordinator of guidance and counseling for USD 501.

USD 501, as well as other districts across the state and country, have scheduled various anti-bullying activities this week.

“Everyone is working on bullying prevention because it is such a part of our culture,” Haberman said.

Twenty-eight percent of students in grades six through 12 have experienced bullying, according to www.stopbullying.gov. The most common types of bullying are verbal and social, and most bullying takes place in school, outside on school grounds and on the school bus, the website states.

“I think what is hard now is the stuff going on with social media,” Haberman said. “It is really insidious. They (students) don’t see a face when they push the send button. It is a lot easier to hurt people.”

Gately was called four-eyes, geek and other harsh names. He felt alone and shunned.

“The names I can get over. It was the exclusion (that hurt),” Gately said Wednesday afternoon. “It was the fact that I sat by myself at lunch.”

Gately’s parents were supportive and helped the teen make it through the bullying.

Gately, who is now happily attending college and plans to enter a United Methodist seminary, said he wished some of his peers would have taken a stand on bullying.

When bystanders intervene, bullying stops within 10 seconds about 57 percent of the time, according to www.stopbullying.gov.

But often if the bystander is a young person, he or she doesn’t feel safe standing up to the bully, Haberman said.

“Sometimes kids won’t say anything because they fear they are going to be the next target,” she said.

School districts are doing what the law requires, said Randy J. Wiler, director of the Kansas Bullying Prevention Program. But schools can do more, he said.

“You have to make it simple and easy to report,” he said.

For example, Wiler said, all schools within the Shawnee Mission school district have a “report bullying button” on their websites. This allows people to report bullying online anonymously.

Students being bullied need to find a reliable adult to confide in, Wiler said. Parents can play a vital role in preventing or stopping bullying, too. Parents should watch for signs of bullying, have an open dialogue with their children and record bullying incidents in a notebook.

Gately said the fact that schools are taking steps at preventing bullying is good.

“Posters don’t do anything,” he said. “But the fact that there are posters up says something.”

While bullying made life difficult for Gately, he made it through it. He finished his middle school years in Wamego and graduated last year from Wamego High School. He said Wamego High School’s anti-bullying program made a difference.

“I don’t want anyone to go through what I had to go through,” Gately said.

He said he doesn’t think students need to be overprotected or sheltered, but there is a fine line between being overprotective and letting bullying happen.

“It’s hard to try to find where that line is,” Gately said. “I don’t know where it is. I think everyone needs to face adversity. You need to suck it up. But there comes a time when you can’t suck it up any more. I bottled it up. I would break down once a month.”

He hasn’t held any grudges and said he knows some of the people who were bullying him in school were bullied by other, older students or often had problems at home.

His advice to those students who are being bullied?

“Find two or three good friends. Try to get through it, which is a tall order. You have to brave it out. Don’t give them (bullies) what they are looking for — they want to see your reaction,” Gately said. “Things do get better. There is light at the end of the tunnel.”