Anti-Bullying and Hazing Policy for Students

Relevant Excerpt

Bullying refers to any form of physical, verbal, demonstrative, or electronic harassment that one should reasonably expect would demean, threaten, or physically or emotionally hurt its victims or others. It can be of a sexual nature or otherwise. It can take place in person, over the phone, in cyberspace, or through an on-line communication, or any other means. It can be one-on-one or group-based.

Examples of conduct that may constitute prohibited bullying include, but are not limited to:

• Threatening another with physical harm;
• Pushing, elbowing, poking, tripping, sitting on, kicking, or hitting;
• Demeaning others’ intellectual ability, academic performance, or grade level; and
• Using one’s position of power to coerce or intimidate another person in any way

Additional examples of conduct that may constitute prohibited bullying include: (i) taunting others because of their physical traits including, but not limited to, age, voice, height, weight, athletic skill, or any other personal characteristic; (ii) taunting others about their social skills, e.g., making jokes at the expense of someone socially awkward; (iii) taunting others either verbally or using gestures about their actual or perceived sexual orientation; (iv) taunting others about their actual or perceived race, color, or national origin; (v) using derogatory terms to refer to someone's race or ethnic background; (vi) excluding someone from a group or activity purposely to hurt them, e.g., refusing to let someone sit at a particular lunch table; (vii) damaging, hiding, taking of property; (viii) calling someone offensive or demeaning names; (ix) making jokes involving offensive stereotypes; (x) posting on Facebook, or any other on-line social networking site, mean, offensive, demeaning, embarrassing, or threatening comments or images; (xi) texting, whether individually or as a group, mean, offensive, demeaning, embarrassing, or threatening comments or images; (xii) creating fake web pages or fake profiles or assuming another's identity in any social media context to create content likely to cause embarrassment or concern; (xiii) spreading mean and hurtful rumors verbally or on-line; and (xiv) creating offensive graffiti.