Banishing Bullies

How Animal Cartoons Can Help Tweens Avoid Schoolyard Bullying

http://www.stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov

David Ehrlich, President, The Track Group, Inc.

Like hazing and taunting, schoolyard bullying has been around seemingly forever. It showed up in “Porky Pig” cartoons and “Revenge of the Nerds” movies. But after 15 people were killed at Columbine High School of Colorado in 1999, the federal government decided that bullying should be a thing of the past.

The Secret Service released a report that found that of the students who shot at or tried to kill other students and teachers, most had been bullied. The National Institutes of Health later revealed that 30 percent of school children said they were bullied regularly.

What ‘Webisodes’ Can Teach Kids

Hoping to consign bullying to history, in 2000 Congress appropriated $3.4 million over three years to educate the public about its risks and dangers. In October 2001, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services designed a program that later became known as Stop Bullying Now.

Part of the design involved consulting with the people most affected by bulling: students themselves. The students’ response surprised Stephanie Bryn, the campaign’s project officer. When Bryn asked 22 students about ways government could try to prevent schoolyard bullying, they told her to show violence. “They wanted us to make it very graphic, to show blood,” Bryn said of the cartoons.

Though Bryn rejected that bit of advice, just the same she was encouraged. The students clearly liked the idea of “webisodes”—cartoons on the Web site, http://www.stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov, of animals bullying and being bullied by other animals. And if they liked it, presumably so would the target group of students aged 9 to 13. Bryn said, “Their point was that there is an overwhelming need to address this problem.”

At the heart of the campaign is its Web site. It reaches the program’s target audience in a couple of ways. The first way is by modeling behavior: showing the right and wrong ways to respond to bullies.

On the program’s Web site is a cast of 23 characters, including 11-year-old Brick the Bull and 10-year-old Milton the piglet. The cartoon shows Brick shoving, teasing, and sullying Milton. Instead of ignoring the bullying, Milton tells his teacher, Senorita Ortega. She informs him that nobody deserves to be bullied and that she will look in to the problem.

Senorita Ortega’s response was the correct one. Bullies continue to bully others in large part because they get away with it. Their victims, afraid of being labeled as “snitches” or “narcs,” fail to tell their parents or school authorities. Trying to change this mindset was the biggest challenge that faced the designers of the site. As one of the site’s designers said, “The biggest challenge in reaching kids is their resistance to getting adults involved. So we tried to overcome that by modeling behavior in the webisodes.”

The webisodes reach their target audience in other ways as well.

As cartoons, they appeal to “tweeners,” those aged 9 to 13. Also, the cartoons deliberately feature animals rather than humans. As one of the program’s designers explains, “We try to appeal to a diverse audience, and the most likely way to do that is through animals.” His implication was that ethnic, racial, and gender groups were less likely to take offence about animals rather than people. In addition, the program contains 70 to 80 partners—civic and educational groups that spread the message about the site and program more generally.

Reaching the Media and Partners

Officially launched in March 2004, the Stop Bullying Now Campaign has reached hundreds of media outlets and influenced nearly two dozen state legislatures. The campaign received no money to evaluate its progress. However, Bryn said it does check with its partners once every two months to see how they have changed their programs.

The Web site is indeed well designed, easy to read, and updated regularly. Despite a small and slightly faded font, the site is a model for federal efforts at social marketing.

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