Thank you Karen. As a retired teacher I love your bullying anecdote.
This is my first post on OBOL because, frankly, I find this format
intimidating. I do however learn a lot from reading all the posts.
Sent from My Slice of Paradise.
On Feb 27, 2021, at 6:03 PM, Karen Saxton <kcsaxton@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"if we all participate when someone insults another"
Yes. One of the best things we can do is comment publically to the comment
and ignore the person making the bullying comments, while bolstering the
newcomer eg "I can see why you thought this might be a XX. The key to telling
it apart from YY is thus..." It is what I teach my kids to do, but in a
slightly different form when they see bullying at school: they are to invite
the bullied kid to sit or play with them, which simply takes the wind out
from under the bully's wings(to use a birdy metaphor). One of my 8 year old
students did this with a kid who was older and being bullied by his peers.
According to adults who watched it happen, the bullies just stood there with
their mouths agape, when this little blonde girl said, you don't have to
listen to them, come wait for your mom with me! She won Miss Congeniality at
the Miss Oregon pageant a couple years back and is a force to be reckoned
with (and studying natural resource management).
On Sat, Feb 27, 2021 at 7:47 AM Teresa Hertzel <teresa.hertzel@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Yes, if we all participate when someone insults another, then at least one
of us can get to the newbie very quickly and stand up for them.
On Sat, Feb 27, 2021 at 9:46 AM <jmeredit@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Nice work Teresa. What a great way to resolve things and I like your idea
that it is on all of us to speak up if we see a problem. Judy in Bend
Jmeredit@xxxxxxxxxxx
On 2021-02-27 11:58, Teresa Hertzel wrote:
I have sent a message to the OBA Board, suggesting that they start an email
listserv (or a Whatsapp or whatever format suits them best) for their own
OBA members. They can use it to communicate to their members about upcoming
events, field trips, policies, and anything else they wish to share with
their members. A Board meeting is scheduled for next week and I hope they
will consider this.
Meanwhile, Jeff Gilligan and Linda Fink have been friends for a long time
and have discovered that there was a misinterpretation and misunderstanding
between them, based on Linda's not knowing that Jeff was the person who was
being accused of bullying because she had not been reading OBOL for awhile.
I hope both of them will post here and explain it. Jeff's knee-jerk
reaction to the perceived betrayal by a friend was inappropriate and I'm
sure he will acknowledge that.
Here is an idea I had last night for helping control any future problems on
OBOL (which of course will never happen, right?):
If YOU perceive someone being unwelcoming or condescending to a newbie, or
if you perceive someone bullying someone else, or behaving in a degrading
way to another member, immediately forward that message to me with your
thoughts, even just one sentence about what you see. This should only take
you a few seconds, so it's not labor intensive for you. If at least 10 (?
not sure of the threshhold) people forward such a message to me, I will
immediately put that poster on Moderated Post and send him or her a private
message, and also write to the bullied one. That way, we have a more
democratic process, with everyone getting heard instead of just
unsubscribing in disgust. That way, all members also have more control and
don't have to feel helpless. I believe over time we can make newbies feel
more welcome and control the bullying and misogyny. This is just an idea,
but thought I'd put it out there for comment.
