Student Bullying, Discipline, and Due Process in Schools

Introduction to School Bullying

According to Illinois Legal Aid Online (2018), bullying can be understood as the aggressive and unwanted behavior exhibited by school-age children that involves a perceived or real power imbalance. Some students use this power — such as physical strength, popularity, or access to privileged information — to harm, blackmail, or control other students. This behavior must be repeated, or have the potential of being repeated, in order to qualify as bullying.

Bullying actions are characterized by causing another student to fear personal harm or damage to their belongings, inflicting mental or physical harm, negatively impacting the victim's class participation and grades, and diminishing a student's willingness to participate actively at school. Bullying can include threats, harassment, stalking, slander, intimidation, theft, physical violence, property destruction, public humiliation, and sexual violence or harassment.

The place, manner, and timing of such actions are important factors in determining whether behavior qualifies as bullying. Schools in Illinois must take immediate action when a bullying situation occurs under any of the following circumstances:

Schools must act promptly to prevent bullying because it makes the school's culture and climate unsafe. Harassment also derails students' focus from learning, and victimized students may suffer emotional and mental health problems that negatively affect academic performance. Steps schools must institute to address bullying include establishing and enforcing anti-bullying rules, ensuring that guardians and students are aware of those rules, assigning staff to handle bullying cases, providing parents and students with contact information for reporting incidents, forwarding the school's bullying policy to the education board, and updating the rules every two years. Updated rules must be published on the school website (Illinois Legal Aid Online, 2018).

This paper explores a bullying scenario and maps out a strategy to address it. In doing so, it draws on three landmark cases — Goss v. Lopez, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, and New Jersey v. T.L.O. — whose rulings help delineate the process of investigation, the disciplining of bullies, and bullying prevention measures. The three cases were decided under the organizational framework used by the National Center for Safe and Secure Learning Environments (NCSSLE), and together they provide a complete spectrum of circumstances under which disciplinary action can be taken and to what extent.

Investigating a Bullying Situation

In Illinois, the education board is responsible for supervising every school district to ensure compliance with all parameters required to address bullying. These parameters include bullying prevention, educating learners about bullying, training staff on prevention strategies, and adopting evidence-based curricula and programs (stopbullying.gov, n.d.). Every school district is required to investigate a bullying report within no more than ten days and to notify the students or guardians of all children involved in the incident (Illinois Legal Aid Online, 2018).

In the past, schools relied on expulsions and suspensions to deal with bullies, but this approach does not adequately address the underlying issues, as illustrated in Goss v. Lopez. Newer approaches include utilizing counseling and social work services, building students' emotional skills, employing psychological services, using restorative measures, and engaging community resources (Illinois Legal Aid Online, 2018).

According to the Illinois Department of Education (2018), every school district must implement a bullying policy that is filed with the education board. This policy must include investigation procedures to determine whether the bullying act falls within the school district's scope or jurisdiction. The school must also provide the bullying victim with adequate information about available community and school-district services, such as support and counseling. School personnel charged with handling bullying must report the incident to parents, other relevant staff, and the student.

In the scenario presented here, the investigation process begins with confirming that the bullying occurred. The process will be handled by the school's bullying prevention personnel. After establishing that the incident took place, the next step is examining the sequence of events that led to the bullying, with the goal of addressing the root cause. All students involved will be questioned and their accounts reviewed. By the end of the process, the prevention personnel should have a comprehensive understanding of how events unfolded — including the fact that the situation originated when Dan confided in Emily about his intention to change his gender.

Due Process Rights to Consider

In any investigation it is essential to uphold the rights of every person involved. All implicated parties have the right to a fair hearing and must be presumed innocent until proven guilty. In Goss v. Lopez, as analyzed by Schimmel (2018), the Supreme Court invoked the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause. Applied to a bullying incident, this means that any student facing suspension has the right to be notified and to receive a hearing. The case involved a student named Dwight Lopez, who was accused alongside eight other students from various Columbus schools. The students were suspended for alleged misconduct without receiving any prior hearing, and they filed suit claiming that their Fourteenth Amendment rights had been violated. The school district's pupil personnel director, Norval Goss, was among the respondents. The court ruled in the students' favor, finding that the law permitting principals to suspend students without a hearing was unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court further held that the State of Ohio had extended the right to a fair education and that this right could not be rescinded without adhering to fair procedures. Those procedures, in the Supreme Court's view, were intended to verify that the alleged misconduct had actually occurred. The Court explained that students facing suspension also have liberty and property interests that are protected through due process.

In Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, a group of Des Moines students devised a plan to express their views on the Vietnam War by wearing black armbands and staging a fast during the Christmas holiday period. When the school principal learned of the plan, he created a policy forbidding students from wearing armbands, with suspension as the penalty for non-compliance. Two students wore the armbands to school and were suspended; John Tinker wore one the following day and received the same punishment (Ellis, 2018). The students' parents sued the school district on the grounds that it had violated the students' right to free expression, seeking to compel the school to stop enforcing the policy. The court ruled that the school district's action was reasonable because school discipline had to be maintained, and the Appeals Court upheld that decision (Ellis, 2018).

In New Jersey v. T.L.O. (n.d.), a student's purse was searched on suspicion that she was concealing cigarettes. The search revealed cigarettes, marijuana, and a list of student names of those who owed T.L.O. money. T.L.O. was charged with marijuana possession and, after an unsuccessful attempt to suppress the evidence, was found guilty by the New Jersey court and placed on probation for one year. The Supreme Court held that, despite the Fourth Amendment, reasonable searches of students — even without probable cause — are permissible in a school setting. The Court ruled that the search was reasonable given the circumstances at the time.

Taken together, these three cases make clear that everyone involved in a bullying incident has rights that must be respected. The school has the right to institute disciplinary measures against bullies, as implied by Tinker v. Des Moines. The school district may also gather evidence without violating the Fourth Amendment. However, the school must remain mindful of the Fourteenth Amendment requirement of a fair hearing and due process. In the present scenario, the students who bullied Danielle and Emily are entitled to due process.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Discipline is an essential part of cohesive living in any society, including schools. Students, parents, and school staff must all be sensitized about bullying and its consequences. School staff members must be trained in bullying prevention and in adherence to the regulations set by the Illinois Department of Education (2018). School districts and the Illinois Department of Education must establish clear policies and guidelines for investigating bullying cases, and the disciplinary framework must be clearly defined and consistently applied.