MANSFIELD, Ohio – Students and faculty at The Ohio State University at Mansfield on Wednesday were “seeing red” to raise awareness for bullying.
The daylong event, aptly named Red Out Bullying, was organized by the university’s Club Ed, a campus group made up of early- and middle-childhood education majors at OSU-M.
Club Ed Vice President and senior education major Andrea Murphy said the event was an extension of PACER National Bullying Prevention Center’s Unity Day, which was celebrated nationally Oct. 21.
“We decided as a club that we wanted to make a stand on our campus,” she said.
To do so, Club Ed had special red shirts made for the event. On the front, each shirt brandishes the words “Ohio unites against bullying,” while the back, enclosed in a white heart, reads “Love Is Louder.”
Murphy said the goal was to make more of a “silent statement” this year with the inaugural Red Out Bullying event. Last year, she explained, Club Ed had a sale in which proceeds went to Unity Day.
Additionally, participants and followers of the event used #redoutbullying on social media to track posts.
“With all these shootings and these bomb threats that are going on, especially in our community right now, we’re just trying to say ‘Stop,’” Murphy said of the idea behind the event. “There’s a huge statement that says that 75 percent of the students who make these threats have been bullied.
“So this is just saying enough is enough – we’re done.”
According to stopbullying.gov, 28 percent of United States students in grades six through 12 have been bullied, while only 20 to 30 percent of those cases are reported to an adult.
Club Ed President and senior education major Tiffany Fox led the way for creating Red Out Bullying, Murphy said. Fox wasn’t immediately available for comment.
Both Fox and Murphy will graduate in May.
“As future teachers, we see that bullying affects the whole student,” Murphy said. “People think that if they’re getting pushed around that it affects physical [well-being], or if they’re getting called names it affects the mental – it affects the entire student.
“A student can’t be asked to learn in a classroom if they’re being bullied.”
She added that it doesn’t matter if the student is bullied at home, on the bus, in school, or by a teacher – it still affects their mental abilities, which, in turn, affects their abilities in school.
Red Out Bullying was part of a larger month of events at OSU-M, which were sponsored by the university’s Office of Diversity and Family Engagement, the student organization NO MORE, and the campus Committee for Diversity and Inclusion, along with The Domestic Violence Shelter.
All the events are centered on domestic violence and bullying awareness and were open to the public.
“We recognize the unity [at this campus], so what we’re trying to do as a group is come together and bring it out into the community and make bullying something that people are aware of,” she said.
In addition, she said bullying shouldn’t be confronted just one day a year.
“This should be something that people are doing every single day by being proactive instead of reactive,” she said.
For more facts about bullying, visit pacer.org or stopbullying.gov.
The mission of Club Ed is to bring together “all levels of future educators in order to create an organization that will serve the community, mentor incoming students, and build relationships that will help members realize their common goal of helping children,” according to its Facebook page.
