What is bullying?
For the purposes of this blog, I will define bullying as a situation in which one or more individuals faces constant negative social interactions badgering, insulting remarks, and intense pressure with an inability to defend him or herself in that situation. This a slight modification of the definition of bullying in Prevalence, antecedents, and effects of workplace bullying: A review by M. Razzaghian and A. Shah. The definition of bullying is much debated and many descriptions of it exist. Several differences between my definition and Razzaghian and Shah's is that I do not mention bullies and targets or power differences. This is because I believe bullying can occur in the presence of temporary power differences which might be political or might include the difference in the number of people on each side of the issue. I also believe that bullies can bully bullies and that anyone can temporarily act as an aggressor. In short, I do not believe that it is useful to label people as all good or all bad. As a result I will talk about bullying as a situation which harms some individuals, and I will try to avoid labelling certain individuals as aggressors or targets. And, I will acknowledge that these rolls might change and that they depend heavily on the perspective of the observer. I will focus on the harm done to some of the individuals involved in the situation.
An Example of Bullying
I was involved in this bullying situation as a TA for a course that had a large group project involving 7 students. My roll was to act as a project manager that was a consultant and and advisor, not a team leader. The students were to select their own rolls and organize their contributions for the successful completion of the project. Without my knowing, early in the project the group fractured with 2 students committed to one version of the project and 5 students committed to another version of the project. From my post-analysis of the situation, it appears that was the event that sparked communication difficulties and exclusionary behaviors on the part of the 5 against the 2. The 2 students were left out of critical group discussions and were ostracized by the rest of the group even to the point of being given demeaning nicknames. The point at which I found out about this, was when I informed the whole group that they were under preforming relative to the group size (unbeknownst to me this was because the potential contributions of two group members were being aborted). This is when I heard accusations that the 2 students were not working or contributing. Following my comments, the 5 students felt like the 2 under performers were endangering the success of the project and endangering their grades. Knowing that one side's story is often only half the story, I met one-on-one with all the students to hear their version. This is where the above description and observations were derived from.
After hearing all the students' stories, I decided to emphasize how the students could correct the situation, by communicating more. On this point I received a lot of resistance from the group leader who I saw as leading the communication difficulties. I encouraged them to actually let the 2 students participate. With 1 week left in the class, the group selected and assigned a task to the 2 students. In the end, the 2 students almost got their contribution finished, but not quite partially due to a lack of communication from the other group members. The students were graded by me and by each other. Due to my opinion of the conflict the performance grade for the group was low. Due to the 5 students grading the 2 students and the imbalance in numbers, the 2 students got quite low grades. As far as I know, the sabotaged contributions and the unfair grades were the largest harms that resulted from the situation. If there was also psychological harm, I was not told about it. (But because of stigma, it is not surprising that nobody brought this up.)
Even though I tried to prevent and repair some of the damage, I made mistakes. I was the only person in the position to do something with the authority to do something. At the time I thought the arrangement of a contribution by the 2 students in the last week with a doable task was reasonable. However, I did not factor into the equation the pressure, the potential ill effects of the interpersonal difficulties which started at the beginning of the project, or the potential for continued sabotage at the end of the term. I also should have noted that the 2 students were the outsiders from the beginning due to their ethnic background and their English skills. If I had been watching for these things, I might have found out about the problem earlier in the term when something could have been done.
I have also concluded that students should not grade each other. The problem is that it opens the process up to petty politics and means that the majority group has power over the minority group. While competition can be a force for good, students who gang up on each other, demean each other, and sabotage each other are involved in bullying situation. This sort of behavior has no place in a respectful classroom.
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