Anti-Bullying committee meets Aug. 25

Posted Aug 23, 2010 by Beth Gaddis

Updated Aug 23, 2010 at 09:51 AM

From my inbox:

The Hillsborough County Anti-Bullying Advisory Committee will meet Wednesday, August 25 at 10 a.m. at County Center, 601 E. Kennedy Blvd., 26th Floor, Conference Room B in downtown Tampa.

The Anti-Bullying Advisory Committee was created by the Board of County Commissioners’ Resolution Number R09-100.  The purpose of the Committee is to provide advice and recommendations to curb and eliminate all forms of bullying throughout Hillsborough County.

For more information, call Carol Michel, Criminal Justice, 813-276-2033.

The Hillsborough school district gave The Tampa Tribune the latest stats on school bullying complaints for the 2009-2010 school year – the first year the district solicited anonymous complaints online.  Our FactFinders group analyzed it and added it to their existing database.

In the first semester, 41 of 199 were verified. No arrests resulted.

You can search the year’s worth of complaints by clicking here, but be warned: Some of the descriptions are pretty raw.

You can also click here to read a story from March and click here for an update in June on what the complaints show us about life on campus. Both stories, and the comprehensive database itself, are the work of education writer Sherri Ackerman.

Most of the latest batch of complaints, as before, come from middle and elementary schools. Few came from high schools.

Here are some highlights from the second semester:

Hillsborough High

“Friend was being bullied because he played his Nintendo DS during lunch and was being pushed around and shoved by seniors and you can tell his feelings were hurt.”

Coleman Middle

“Victim was knuckle-punched in the back of the head. Today after lunch was kicked in the genitals which caused him to collapse to the ground. The bullies then “high-fived” over him as he was lying on the ground. He suffers verbal abuse daily, has had his head banged against a concrete wall, books knocked out of his arms and his hat thrown into a dirty toilet bowl.”

Turkey Creek Middle

“He bullies me everyday and calls me names and hits me occasionally.”

Click here to file a bullying complaint with Hillsborough schools.