Combating bullying and bias at Oceanside High School

The tragedy of Tyler Clementi — the Rutgers University freshman who committed suicide last month after a video of him having a sexual encounter with another man was posted on the Internet — unfolded far from Oceanside, but the reality of bullying is something that local school administrators, faculty members and students have to deal with every day.

“I’m proud to say we do a lot in regards to all forms of bullying and harassment and incidents of bias in any form,” said Oceanside High School Principal Mark Secaur. “We certainly didn’t need the recent unfortunate incident at Rutgers to remind us.”

Secaur explained that OHS takes a proactive approach to dealing with bullying and bias among students. The school has students trained as mediators who can assist their peers in resolving small issues, and the school’s staff is prepared for more serious cases of bullying and discrimination. A school psychologist offers counseling to students, as do guidance counselors and social workers. The school’s associate principals are also prepared to act as mediators of conflicts between students.

“We have a very able clinical staff that responds to issues if there was a peer conflict where someone was bullied,” said Secaur. “We don’t just work to give the bully a consequence, we work to assist the victim and we look to assist the bully, to help them understand they made a poor choice and that decisions down the road should be made in a better fashion.”

Instances of bias don’t come up very often at OHS, but when they do, the school gets involved quickly, to make it clear to students that intolerance will not be tolerated. “It’s our job to educate not just the academic core subjects, but the whole child,” Secaur said. “So ... if there’s issues involving intolerance and bias, we have to try to weave things into the curriculum to give students a greater understanding of the power of diversity. And these are things that we’ve worked on for a long time and we continue to work on. Because one [incident] is too many, and we have to use it as a teachable moment.”

For many years, OHS has had an active Gay/Straight Alliance, which helps promote tolerance among students. “They’ve certainly become active within the school to make sure people are accepted for whoever they are,” Secaur said. “Many of our classrooms have signs that say ‘Gay/Straight Safe Zone,’ just to really reinforce the goal of making sure everyone feels very comfortable here.”

And although instances of cyber-bullying attract widespread media attention, Secaur describes students as more accepting than those in past generations. “Even though we hear about incidents like Rutgers, compared to a time when I went to high school, I think students are more tolerant today,” he said. “I think they’re more tolerant of people who are not just like themselves. We have a greater percentage of students with special needs in our buildings than we ever did, and every school in the country can say the same thing. It allows for an environment where you have many different types of people, and it makes for a better high school, I believe.”

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