Is Bachmann Still Opposed to Anti-Bullying Legislation?

New York Times:

A prosecutor in western Massachusetts brought criminal charges Monday against nine teenagers accusing them of relentlessly humiliating and threatening a 15-year-old girl who hanged herself in January.

The charges, including felony indictments for two boys and four girls who were 16 or over, were an unusually sharp legal response to the problem of adolescent bullying, which is increasingly conducted in cyberspace as well as in the schoolyard and has drawn growing legal attention.

In the uproar that followed the suicide of the girl, Phoebe Prince, of South Hadley, and of an 11-year-old boy in nearby Springfield last year, the Massachusetts legislature stepped up work on an anti-bullying law that is now near passage. The law would require school staff members to report suspected incidents and principals to investigate them. It would also demand that schools teach about the dangers of bullying. Forty-one other states have anti-bullying laws of varying strength.

In the recent case, two boys and four girls, ages 16 to 18, face felony charges including statutory rape, violation of civil rights, harassment and disturbing a school assembly, Elizabeth D. Scheibel, the Northwestern district attorney, said at a news conference in Northampton, Mass. Three younger girls have been charged in juvenile court.

Flanked by state and local police officers, Ms. Scheibel said that Pheobe Prince’s suicide followed nearly three months of taunting and physical attacks by a cluster of students at South Hadley High School.

From the DB archives (2006):



Bachmann on schoolyard bullying:

i think for all us our experience in public schools is there have always been bullies, always have been, always will be.
i just don't know how we're ever going to get to point of zero tolerance and what does it mean?

I guess, several questions that was comment, one question would be
what would be our definition of bullying?

will it get to the point where we are completely stifling free speech and expression?
will it mean that what form of behavior will there be, will we be expecting boys to be girls
what is it exactly that we're asking for?

i don't say that as a sexist comment but there are just differences with boys and girls when they're on the playground, when they're in the classroom.

None of us like inappropriate behavior, none of us like sassy children, but there's just a fact of life that as we grow up, we're kind of little barbarians when we're two and our process as mothers and fathers is to civilize our children.

I just don't know how we can realistically expect a zero tolerance of bullying behavior.