Rachel's Challenge Reaches High School Students

Hundreds of headlines scatter the news about bullying: A student in Ohio wears a wire to catch a bullying teacher, a Jordanian student is beaten so bad he has vision and balance troubles, even in the music industry, Lady Gaga is launching an anti-bullying campaign.

At the administration level, lawmakers in Michigan just passed legislation Wednesday requiring school districts to develop anti-bullying policies.

With the continual expansion of social media and the distance the internet can put between a bully and their victim, Laison Officer Kelly DeJonge said bullying is only getting easier.

"I think cyberbullying is so dangerous because people don't have to bully face-to-face anymore, they can do it over the computer or over a cell phone, sometimes anonymously," DeJonge said. "It is easy for people to call one another names, bad mouth, threaten or harass when it can be done over the computer rather than in person.  With the amount of new social networking sites and blogs out there, the cyberbullying issue will continue to grow."

And students at Nicolet were reminded Tuesday of just how dangerous and serious bullying can become, when a representative of the Rachel's Challenge movement came to speak at the school.

Rachel Scott was the first student murdered April 20, 1999, at Columbine, along with 12 other people murdered in the high school shooting. USA Today reported that the two teens, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, had bragged in diaries about picking on freshmen and "fags."

Just one month before her death, Rachel wrote an essay about kindness, ethics and compassion which her family says reflected exactly the kind of person Rachel was. She sites the Webster's dictionary definition for compassion, however her own definition offers a different perspective:

"My definition of compassion is forgiving, loving, helping, leading and showing mercy for others. I have this theory that if one person can go out of their way to show compassion, then it will start a chain reaction of the same. People will never know how far a little kindness can go."

That message is the foundation for Rachel's Challenge, a movement to spread kindness by chain reactions.

"Sometimes children don't realize the consequences of comments they make electronically and the impact their comments can have on other people," said Donna Bohn, a business teacher at Nicolet.

And even if parents are not the savviest at social media, DeJonge says they're not helpless to protect their kids.

"One of the key factors that I cannot stress to parents enough is to know what and who your teens are communicating with online," she said. "Keep an open line of communication with your son or daughter so that they feel comfortable talking to you about issues such as cyberbullying."