White House summit targets bullying

WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama may be president now, but growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia, he said, he was a kid with big ears and a funny name.

And Thursday, at the White House's second summit on bullying he said he knew firsthand how it felt to be picked on.

"As adults, we all remember what it was like to see kids picked on in the hallways and in the schoolyards," he said before an audience of about 150 students, parents, educators, policymakers and first lady Michelle Obama. "And I have to say, with big ears and the name I have, I wasn't immune. I didn't emerge unscathed."

Now his administration is throwing a spotlight on an issue that, he said, impacts almost a third of U.S. middle and high school students each year.

The White House unveiled new private and public anti-bullying campaigns, including a new antibias push by MTV Networks with ads and celebrities like Britney Spears, and new features on Facebook.

On Facebook, the social-networking powerhouse, it will be easier to report and remove abusive posts while also notifying a parent or teacher. And the language will go back to the cyberbullies, as well, to give them a chance to remove the post.

Formspring, a social-media site with 22 million members, is now working with MIT on ways to more effectively block bullying. Some bullying, they said, may not show up when words alone are blocked, rather than language used in context.

It was on Formspring and Facebook that the 2010 suicide of West Islip teen Alexis Pilkington gained national attention because of anonymous negative comments posted on her pages. Her parents have said they don't know if cyberbullying pushed her to take her life.

The federal government also launched a new website to help the effort, stopbullying.gov. A number of national associations of teachers, school boards, student councils and the PTA also are launching outreach efforts offering resources and support.

"If there's one goal of this conference, it's to dispel the myth that bullying is just a harmless rite of passage," Obama said. "It's not . . . and it's not something we have to accept."

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-Mineola) attended with other members of Congress. "We're fighting for the health and safety of our young people so they can reach their full potential and compete in tomorrow's economy. The president should be commended for advancing this effort with today's conference."

In calling for public and private cooperation to end bullying, the president cited several audience members for praise: parents who became activists after the suicides of their bullied children as well as several teens who acted against bullying.

One of those parents was Sirdeaner Walker of Springfield, Mass., whose 11-year-old son Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover killed himself after enduring anti-gay slurs.

"Look at us," she told the audience in the summit's wrap-up. "We could be you. Please help us so no other family has to suffer what we're suffering right now."