Leanna Byrne | Deputy Editor
Hidden in a dark corner on the fourth floor of the Arts Block sits the Anti-Bullying Research and Resource Centre; unloved and unrecognised. The Centre was opened in 1996 on the heels of work done by Dr Mona O’Moore and her team on the Nationwide Survey of Bullying at School in Ireland.Yet, the only thing that separates the centre from a maze of classrooms and offices is a small A4 page clinging to the door with the words ABC printed on it. Needless to say it was difficult to find.
When you walk through the ABC door the first thing you notice is the battle against space. Three or four desks have been shoved into an average sized room, there seems to be a library standing its ground in the corner, and papers pile high. There is another room, however, that is spacious enough for guests. That is where I was brought to talk to Dr O’Moore and Lían McGuire for just over an hour about bullying in third level education.
Before I could ask any questions Lían McGuire launched into an enthusiastic account of her most recent third level study findings. Through the help of USI (the Union of Students in Ireland) McGuire collected data from universities all over Ireland through an online survey. From the 400 respondents she found about 14% of students had experienced a form of bullying in university, a figure which is twice as high as the UK. According to McGuire this study is “next to nothing anywhere in the world”.
“There are individual studies here and there in the US and Turkey, but they only focus on one university,” explained McGuire.
Interestingly, the findings showed that cyberbullying was quite low with only 3.5% of those surveyed experiencing it. Although McGuire reckons this will change in the next five years because she was looking at a group of people who view the internet and social media as a relatively new phenomenon.
In fact, exclusion in college, which is often seen as something we should learn to deal with, is one of the hardest problems for students according to McGuire’s findings. In this case the bully is able to self-select. It takes huge courage from other members of that peer group to interact with the person excluded for fear of their own exclusion.
The second biggest issue that was found, particularly in females, is unwanted sexual attention. In the study about a quarter had experienced unwanted sexual attention, which is quite large.
Regardless of these significant findings Trinity College and the majority of universities across Ireland have little or no anti-bullying policies. In our own institution we have a ‘dignity and respect’ policy that points to no formal complaint structures and is extremely hard to come by. McGuire believes it to be ‘strange’ because university is the breeding ground for people going into the workplace. “People are just going to fall into the workplace without any new ideas or new outlooks on bullying. It needs to be looked at badly”
At this point Dr O’Moore chimed in to offer me an example. “I was on the Ray D’arcy show this morning and he had two people on who had been victims of bullying. One was a thirty-five year old woman who had been bullied for five years. It almost led her to suicide. Her tormentors went onto college and carried out the same torment at third level. Sadly, these are the people who have a manipulative power to be charming on the one hand and ruthless on the other. They get their way, they go upstream and before you know it they’re in a very high position.”
Dr O’Moore went on to tell me that college could do ‘so much more’ on the matter. Without formalities in place it is impossible for a student who feels bullied in college to report it or to have somebody look into it. “It forces students to lose concentration from their work and even drop out of college.”
But surely it is extremely tough to provide proof of bullying in such a disaggregated environment? O’Moore and McGuire agreed with this. In fact, they told me that the traditional bullying methods are much harder to prove than bullying online – but it is possible.
“They claim they have everything in place, but if you try to go through the steps you’ll come to a dead end,” said O’Moore. “They’re not as open and as transparent as they say they are. There should be no shame with having an anti-bullying policy!”
I suggested that maybe the university expected us to handle bullying ourselves because we are seen to be a lot more mature than we were in secondary school. McGuire replied that bullying is an issue at all stages in life and in all organisations. “A policy should be for an overall benefit. I think it needs to happen, but the universities do not want to deal with the matter”. O’Moore often found it to be worse for adults to come to terms with bullying since they do not want to come across as a burden and the feeling of inadequacy can be severe.
This leads to question why universities have not dealt with the problem already. They both laughed at me. Dr O’Moore told me about Trinity’s plan to do an exit survey about why people leave college that never got off the ground. The administration felt it necessary to have all the steps in place before they conducted the survey to make sure they did not find a problem.
“I just find it such a strain that there is so much stigma around,” O’Moore remarked. “There are so many students dropping out and we don’t really know the reason behind it, or even why so many students suffer from depression. Did they have these problems before they came to college?”
Both women maintain that the university is “not willing to call a spade a spade” because they see implementing an anti-bullying policy creates a negative image for them. Lían urged universities across Ireland to conduct surveys of their own to look at the problem areas and to model a policy for their universities. “The quality control has to run from the top down, it has to be followed up on and it has to be seen to be followed up on. We can’t keep pushing it under the carpet anymore because a tragedy could happen.”
O’Moore hoped that Trinity might soon have a campaign about the issue and does not see any reason why students do not receive a leaflet about bullying in their Freshers packs. “College could have a website, a helpline, a walk-in; something dedicated to the issue so the students know they are actually interested in their welfare”.
Perhaps it is strange that Trinity have no clear-cut anti-bullying policy after sixteen years of ABC. I found this to be a point of distress for them as McGuire could not comprehend why the university does not ask ABC for any input at all.
“In this college we don’t really exist,” said O’Moore. “Maybe one day a philanthropist will come in and support our research into bullying and look at us as a resource.”
ABC was set up initially as an independent research body targeting the area of bullying, a course it sadly continues to follow. The resource side of their work, including counselling and “victim support” aspects, evolved as a result of their research. The little money they receive from the seminars they give is what keeps them ticking over.
“The research that we do promotes us so that we can do seminars outside of college. It is important for us to be known for our findings because I might be asked to go out and give a talk in schools about it. Of that we will get a professional fee and a percentage of that goes to the centre. That’s what keeps us ticking over.”
“It would be lovely if the college gave us recognition, said McGuire.
“Even if they just took pride in our work,” replied O’Moore.
