Emily Peinado is tall, attractive and well-spoken.
At first glance, “bullying victim” does not pop into your mind when you see her.
Bullying is an issue in Bayfield, and after being the victim of it last summer, Peinado decided to raise awareness about it. She organized an assembly about bullying that was presented to the whole school on Feb. 29. After that, members of the Friends of Rachel Club organized “Dude, Be Nice Week” at BHS, which posted positive messages around town and encouraged people to, well… be nice.
Bullying isn’t just teasing your peers, Peinado explained. And it has taken on vicious twists in the age of Instagram and Facebook, when people can say hateful things, often anonymously, and not face any repercussions for it.
“It’s more under the radar,” Peinado said of bullying in the 21st century. “It’s not physical. It’s emotional bullying, and cyber bullying, and it’s hidden behind doors and phone screens.”
Peinado, now 18, said her issues of being bullied started last summer when a rumor went around that she was pregnant. She wasn’t, but that wasn’t the point, she said.
She received anonymous phone calls and texts calling her a slut. When she went out, people wrote the term on her car, as well.
“It was basically torture for me,” she said. “It ruined my life.” She holed up for the summer, mostly staying home and working for her dad.
Later in the summer, she decided she could let this ruin her senior year or she could do something.
“I wanted to help the next person when it happens,” she said.
Going back to school last fall was tough, and the teasing continued for a while, but she said she discussed the issue with Principal Leon Hanhardt, then started working on the assembly with Jen Leithauser, the advisor for the FOR Club, which focuses on issued of bullying, friendship and acceptance. That helped her move on, basically.
In the assembly, she discussed her experience of being bullied, as did other students, and even a few teachers and coaches. She also conducted a survey before and after the assembly to gauge student response to it.
She asked what was the meanest thing people had said to another student.
Responses ranged from “go kill yourself” to milder teasing, she said.
What she saw as encouraging was the fact that people came to her after the assembly and said they had bullied others, or they had been the victims of bullying, and now they understood better what was going on.
What does Peinado say to people who insist bullying isn’t a problem? And that includes her peers, she notes. A few classmates told her bullying wasn’t a big deal while she was discussing the assembly with Leithauser.
She still thinks bullying is learned behavior and is not something we do naturally. And she tells people it does happen here.
“If we were hard-wired to bully people, we wouldn’t have made it this far as a species,” she said. Social media has made it much easier to participate in bullying – hate pages can be created quickly on Instagram and Facebook, then taken down in seconds.
“It’s easier to bully someone when it’s not face to face,” she said. “You don’t have to see the reactions.”
She’s leaving this fall to study forensic science at the University of Montana in Missoula and is looking forward to leaving Bayfield.
She said she never found out who was behind the smear campaign against her, or why they did it.
She hopes the assembly and “Dude, Be Nice” has helped raise awareness about the issue.
She presented a summary of her findings recently to the Bayfield School Board, and she said she appreciated that they acknowledged bullying is an issue and asked questions about her presentation and survey.
But one or two events won’t change things at her alma mater, she predicted.
“I hope people think about how hurtful it is, and how obnoxious it is,” she said of bullying. “It’s not a necessary thing.”
Stopbullying.gov has a link to Peinado’s presentation at http://www.stopbullying.gov/blog/2016/07/05/why-do-we-hurt-each-other.
