STATEMENT ON BULLYING
The Montgomery Catholic Preparatory School community seeks on a consistent basis to assist students in
seeing how their actions affect others and affect the common good. When the harmony of our learning
community is ruptured, we will seek, whenever possible, to involve those who have committed the offense in
the active restoration of a good and loving social order.
“Discipline brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” Hebrews 12:11
Montgomery Catholic Preparatory School recognizes that bullying exists today in many forms, including cyber
bullying. Our school is not immune to this contagion, but we seek to address it with education and with intervention.
For the last few years we have been teaching students how to recognize and how to redirect bullying, and will
continue those efforts. Here are some of the terms our students learn in order to help them be equipped as agents of
bullying prevention:
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Bullying: Bullying is a form of violence that is intentional, repeated, and that involves an imbalance of
power between the people involved. Bullying can take the form of an action, word or gesture.
Bully’s Sense of Entitlement: Mistaken belief that people have the right to use violence or threats of
violence to express feeling, meet needs or satisfy desires. Our Catholic faith condemns all bullying.
Bystander: Those who witness instances of bullying are bystanders; they must be willing to speak up or to
report the bullying to a responsible adult. At our school bystanders who try to protect the victim are heroes.
Electronic Intimidation: Using electronic communications to harass, threaten, antagonize or intimidate
another person. This includes e-mails, instant messages, twitters, chat room and/or web log postings, text
messages, posing as someone else for purposes of harassing them or others, using a person’s picture or a
digitally enhanced image without their permission, and so on. A student who uses these devices, even from
home or from another site, to harass another student is disrupting the fabric of our learning community and
will be held responsible for doing so. Intimidation is always wrong, no matter what form it takes.
Enabling: Enabling is protecting a person from the consequences of his or her violent actions out of a
sense of love, compassion, fear, or as a survival instinct. Enabling results from misguided beliefs, feelings,
attitudes, and behaviors. Enablers are people who let the bully keep on bullying—and this is always
wrong.
Harassment: Harassment is a type of violence that is racial, cultural or sexual in nature. It is unwanted,
repeated and usually non-reciprocal. It creates a hostile, intimidating or offensive school environment.
Neither the Diocese of Mobile nor the school has any tolerance for such behavior. It also interferes with a
person’s ability to learn or feel safe and comfortable at school. Harassment, like bullying always involves a
power imbalance between the harasser and the person being harassed. Harassment can take the form of a
look, gesture, word, e-mail, text message or action. Catholic morality teaches us to never to harass anyone.
Horseplay: “Goofing around” or “playing” that may include pushing, shoving, tripping or name-calling
when there is no imbalance of power. Even when friends mutually condone such behavior among
themselves, it sets the wrong example and creates conditions in which someone may be injured.
Implicit Tolerance of Bullying: When violence is accepted as the morn by adults, students, or parents
who ignore, rationalize, or minimize incidents of violence, then a dangerous tolerance of bullying begins to
develop and must be counteracted. At our Catholic school we must never allow bullying to be tolerated.
Violence: Violence is any action, word or gesture that hurts a person’s body, feelings, friendships,
reputations, or property—regardless of the intent. (See Matthew 26:52)
Student’s Name: ________________________________ Homeroom: __________________________
Parent’s Signature: ______________________________ Date: __________________
Student’s Signature: _____________________________ Date: __________________