Jackson Free Press

When John Yu was a student at Jackson's Chastain Middle School, he witnessed firsthand the effects that bullying can have. A boy in one of his classes brought a revolver to school to defend himself from bullies who had threatened him consistently that year. Yu, now 28, still vividly remembers the fear he felt on that day.

"It was crazy," he recalls, "(The administration) treated it like a tornado warning, so everyone was told to stay in their rooms with the doors locked. Students in our classroom were climbing out windows, running all over campus, and everyone was terrified. No one knew what to do because there were no anti-bullying policies in Mississippi at the time. Unfortunately, there still aren't."

Yu, who was born in Starkville, works as youth programs coordinator for the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi in Jackson. He started as an intern there in 2009, after earning a bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of North Carolina and a master's degree in sociology from Mississippi State University.

One of his major projects at the ACLU is helping to get anti-bullying legislation passed for all schools in Mississippi, a project he started while he was still an intern at the organization.

"We see policy as a way to help all children in Mississippi," Yu says. "As parents, educators and responsible Mississippians, we shouldn't expect children to be the first and last line of defense against school violence."

Currently, state lawmakers are debating proposed legislature that would mandate all schools to develop a policy on bullying, including writing procedures for how students should report bullying and how teachers should deal with it.

Both the Senate and the House have passed S.B. 2015, and it has now been referred to the Senate conference committee. It will likely go back to both houses for another round of votes. Yu says it was a major victory that the bill was passed in the House, but it still has a lot of steps last before it becomes law.

Yu explained that the most effective anti-bullying policies should contain enumeration: instead of an all encompassing rule or vague verbiage, a policy would include a detailed list of the categories of students and characteristics that are protected, including race, class, disability and sexual orientation.

"Without enumeration, a bill doesn't really have much to it," Yu says.

"Research shows that anti-bullying policy that does not contain enumeration is like having no policy at all. Students feel safer, and teachers are more likely to intervene when enumeration is included in school 
policies."