Report It! posters promote safety

Whether it’s in a classroom or in the halls, the new “Report it!” posters provide information that allows people to anonymously report bullying.

Sydney Grissom, Staff Reporter
September 30, 2013

The ‘Report It!’ posters can be spotted throughout the school.  A new method to report incidents of bullying and other dangers related to school,  students can now anonymously send information and tips to the administration.

“We want students to feel comfortable reporting any type of harassment or bullying on any level,”  assistant principal Bruce Coachman said. “It doesn’t matter what it is, whether it’s something minor, somebody getting picked on, some cyber bullying, physical bullying, or whatever the case might be.”

The new reporting system offers easier ways to send information to the administration rather than going and sitting down with them like students have had to in the past.

“With the posters it makes it easy because there are phone numbers and there are websites,” Coachman said. “It’s easy to report that and it can be done in a confidential manner so they don’t have to go face to face and talk about it. They can tell somebody and then we as administrators can look at it and see it, and then we address the issue as we see it.”

Being able to send information anonymously could make a huge difference in the amount of incidents being reported.

According to the Safe Schools website, “57 percent of students would not report an incident if they could not do it anonymously.”

Students may start to report things more often being able to do it anonymously.

“I think that the new system will allow more students to send their information and be less scared to do so,” sophomore Sydney Hess said. “It was a good idea for the administration to do this.”

The administration wants students to know that bullying of any kind will not be tolerated and the new system is a good way to report these kind of things.

“It’s not something we accept. It’s not something that we want to go on,” Coachman said.  “We’re not turning a blind eye to it.  We want them to have the conscientiousness to report something that’s going on like that.”

Some students may believe that reporting bullying or harassment will not do anything to help the situation, however Coachman believes differently from experience.

“I know that when I find out about it and I address it, not because of me, just because it is addressed, that it gets better,” Coachman said. “Typically the student that was bullying someone stops, and they may go on to someone else and so we have to continue to address them, but at least at least it stops from that one person and we can address that.”

There are 4 ways that students can anonymously report information: