The College of Education will host a viewing of “Bullied,” a documentary created by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit civil rights organization fighting hate crimes and helping those who are victims of hate crimes.
Teaching Tolerance is a project of the SPLC that attacks bullying in schools by finding ways to end the conflicts while aiding the students affected by bullying.
The screening of “Bullied” will be held in Graves Hall Room 118 tonight at 6 and is expected to run until 8 p.m. The event is open to both students and members of the Tuscaloosa community, and it is a free event.
“It is troubling what students who get bullied go through—it is horrible,” said Alexander Parks, who is pursing a doctorate degree in education.
The documentary follows the story of a student in school who eventually files a lawsuit against the district and school officials. His action creates a decision that public school officials must protect all students from bullying, including those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
“This is a way to get people to come together to watch the documentary,” Parks said. “Panelists will respond to the movie and have ideas for solving the bullying problems.”
The panelists present at the documentary will be Principal of Hillcrest Middle School C’Kimba Hobbs; Anthony Harris, a teacher at Bryant High School; Josh Burford, coordinator of student development programming at the University; and Joyce Stallworth, senior associate dean of the College of Education.
“We consider bullying a very important and serious topic,” Stallworth said. “Our students particularly must understand why bullying happens and how to prevent it.”
Nationally, bullying is becoming more of an issue in schools, she said. Bullying can arise through different avenues – through in-school situations, but also through cell phones, video games and the Internet.
“Bullying happens for a plethora of different reasons, [like] not knowing conflict resolution, but it is important for people to know the differences in bullying and knowing how to resolve issues before they lead to bullying,” Stallworth said.
Immediately after the documentary, the panelists will share their thoughts about the documentary then open the discussion to questions. Following the discussion portion, refreshments will be served and seven child and young adult books about bullying will be raffled off.
“We are hosting this event to address the issues of bullying in schools and to start the dialogue about how to eradicate it in Tuscaloosa and Alabama,” Parks said.
More information about the event can be found at events.ua.edu.
