Pupils debate efforts to prevent bullying
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5 Points Mentioned
By KATHY CHANG
Staff Writer
MILLTOWN — Students from the borough’s Joyce Kilmer School and the North Plainfield
Middle School were faced with a question: Are anti-bullying programs in school districts enough
to prevent bullying?
The students had to research and discuss the anti-bullying topic for an interactive bi-district
debate that was held Dec. 4 at Joyce Kilmer. The project came about after Geralyn Gerhart, a
language arts teacher at Joyce Kilmer, met Susan Sapega, a reading teacher in North Plainfield,
at a training symposium at Rutgers University.
“She asked if I could mentor her on the debates that we have been doing in Milltown,” Gerhart
said.
One thing led to another, and Gerhart invited 17 of Sapega’s seventh-grade accelerated students
to attend the debate. Fourteen of Gerhart’s eighth-grade accelerated students paired up with the
North Plainfield pupils and acted as mentors during the debate. Some students acted as judges.
The students spent a month and a half researching the topic. The debate, which sounded similar
to a courtroom proceeding, involved affirmative arguments, statistics and rebuttals.
The students who argued that anti-bullying programs are not enough cited the case in which
Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old Rutgers student, committed suicide after his roommate secretly
filmed him during an encounter in their dorm room in 2010.
The students asserted that the roommate’s 30-day jail term was too lenient and his actions were
the cause of Clementi’s suicide.
They also brought up the suicide of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince in 2010. The teenager committed
suicide after being bullied for several months at her high school in Massachusetts. Six classmates
were criminally prosecuted.
The students who argued that anti-bullying programs are effective noted that reported cases of
bullying were down 30 percent in 2012 and 29 percent in 2013. They argued that a correlation
between bullying and suicide could not be proved to tie in with one another.
They also claimed that mental illness could have been factors in some of the school violence
cases.
After a drum roll, the students who argued that the anti-bullying programs used in schools are
not enough were declared the winners. After the debate, the teams of students shook hands.
John Ferguson, principal at North Plainfield Middle School, said he was glad that there was
collaboration between the schools.
“The students worked diligently for a month and a half,” he said.
William Veit, principal at Joyce Kilmer, said the teachers and students did an amazing job. He
was happy to see the professionalism among the students during and after the debate.
Joyce Kilmer students Megan Clarke, Adi Zacks, Derek Buhl, Alyse Messeroll, John Hoban and
Stephen Gardner said they were glad to have been able to help out other students.
“It’s awesome that two schools can unite,” Messeroll said.
For some pupils, such as Zacks and Buhl, this was their first time in a debate.
“My heart was pounding and there were butterflies in my stomach,” Buhl said. “That went away
once we started communicating and discussing the information.”
In the spring, North Plainfield Middle School will come back to Joyce Kilmer for their very first
debate against one another.
Contact Kathy Chang at kchang@gmnews.com.