Bullying and cyberbullying were topics I studied during a part of my academic career. With an extremely capable graduate student, I was able to publish several articles on the topic and my colleague went on to complete a post doc with a leading school bullying researcher. Schools struggle to address these challenges and one of the established predictors of success is school climate [https://www.apa.org/advocacy/interpersonal-violence/bullying-school-climate]. School climate which is typically measured with questionnaires might be translated as values and culture. I like to describe it as how a group thinks about itself – what kind of people are we? School culture builds over time, but on a daily basis it is developed and communicated by staff and student leaders. Efforts to promote a more positive school climate sometimes involve efforts to get student leaders to communicate that bullying our peers is not who we are. Those peers regarded as leaders are quite influential in establishing valued behaviors.
I tend to use this model of influence to understand how appropriate behavior is modeled and communicated in society. What examples do our leaders demonstrate? What kind of people are we? President Trump’s present wife claims to share my interests. She offers a message to young people captured in her suggestion that young people #bebest. However, this suggestion comes across as disingenuous given the slurs and belittlement used as a tactic by our President. Culture tends to be controlled much more strongly by leaders than by those who watch. Those who study the phenomenon of bullying identify multiple actors in many settings involving abuse. There can be passive bystanders and encouragers. There may be those who attempt to shield the victim. As I have applied my personal interest to understand the behavior of Trump, I wonder what type of culture encourages belittling labels and racist slurs. This type of behavior can’t be discounted as the naïveté and lack of experience of middle school kids. What category of actor in a bullying scenario would you as a researcher assign to Melania? There is the message of #bebest, but then there is the silence and indifference in the face of actual behavior. Someone ignoring inappropriate behavior in a President despite the personal rejection of exactly this type of behavior seems to establish a new category – something different from passive observer. #firsthypocrite.