Youth Leadership Conference Opens Students’ Eyes to Realities of Bullying

Until they came to State College for a youth leadership conference this week, students from Donegal High School in Lancaster County thought bullying wasn’t a problem at their school.

On Monday, they arrived in State College for Arrow Child & Family Ministries’ annual “Stand Up” conference. To tie in with this year’s theme of bullying and harassment, the students had to think of a project they could start in their own schools to stand up against bullying.

Then on Wednesday – only one day before the Donegal students had to present their project – they found an anonymous Twitter account that viciously attacked and insulted their classmates. Even worse, some of their classmates on social media thought they had created the account themselves to prove a point at the anti-bullying conference.

State College resident and Arrow program coordinator Sarah Valsechi says this was exactly what the students needed to give them a new perspective on harassment.

“It opened up the students’ eyes to the fact that you don’t always see bullying,” Valsechi says. “And sometimes you don’t see it because you don’t want to see it.” 

The Donegle students ultimately planned to distribute surveys throughout their high school to gather personal stories about ways harassment and bullying have impacted students’ lives. Those stories will then be prominently displayed, forcing students to consider their classmates’ lives from a new perspective.

Other groups planned to form clubs or anti-bullying groups, hold school-wide events to promote unity, and one even planned an interactive art exhibit that will use cages as a metaphor for social injustices.

In addition to working on their projects, the students also heard from a number of speakers on the qualities of leadership, being a successful student and how to stand up for others in their times of need.

Valsechi says the conference is designed to help the students return to their schools and actually create positive change – so she’ll be following up with all the schools to check in on the students’ progress with their projects. This year being her first with the Stand Up conference, Valsechi says she’s excited to see what the students are able to accomplish.

Tanner Spratt, a sophomore at Rochester High School in Beaver County, says he was particularly moved by the idea of “Zen relationships,” which recalls the old tale of three blind men and an elephant. Before turning to anger and argument with another person, Spratt says he’ll try to understand their position by “touching their side of the elephant.”

Fellow Rochester sophomore Antonio Simoni says their school is very small, which means there’s less bullying than in larger schools – but that doesn’t mean his time in State College hasn’t given him a goal to work towards. 

“I hope we can prevent bullying,” Simoni says. “We can build relationships in our school, so we can be like a big family.”

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