The Guilty Bystander

When I was growing up back in the 70s, harassment and bullying weren't on the social radar, either at school or in the workplace. I vividly remember a classmate who was relentlessly hounded until her parents actually transferred her to another school. As far as I could tell, the only reason her tormentors decided she needed to be bullied was that she ran faster than any of the boys. It didn't take much to be "different" in the early 1970s, especially in a small parochial school. Living outside the lines was risky.

Counselors work with both bullies and victims but only recently have professionals turned their attention to the group called Bystanders. These are the people who know what's going on, know it's wrong but are afraid to take any risks inherent in helping the victim. In elementary school I was a bystander. I knew that the reasons my classmate's harassers gave for picking on her were silly and probably untrue, but I didn't speak up.

In certain settings, bystanders might be perfectly right about the fear of retaliation. School cliques can be cruel. Employees in companies with ruthless policies and no union protection can be fired for telling the truth. But the stubborn fact is that injustices don't usually change until someone challenges them. The challenge often begins when one person speaks up.

One of my intentions for this year is to get into the habit of speaking up for others who are being slammed. In the current economic and emotional climate this might include whole groups of people; hard times always produce scapegoats and underdogs are easy targets. For easygoing introverts, speaking up is a real pain - we'd rather kick back and shoot the breeze over a beer.

But in cases where another person's safety, livelihood, reputation or even life (remember the recent Phoebe Prince case, where the victim committed suicide?) are at stake, doing the right thing trumps personal comfort.

Although some of us are pretty good at blending in, the truth is that we're all a little quirky. The life we save may someday be our own.