{"id":34162,"date":"2016-03-04T09:03:37","date_gmt":"2016-03-04T17:03:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/schools-find-campaign-talk-conflicts-with-no-bullies-message\/"},"modified":"2016-03-04T09:03:37","modified_gmt":"2016-03-04T17:03:37","slug":"schools-find-campaign-talk-conflicts-with-no-bullies-message","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/schools-find-campaign-talk-conflicts-with-no-bullies-message\/","title":{"rendered":"Schools find campaign talk conflicts with no-bullies message"},"content":{"rendered":"

BUFFALO, N.Y. \u2014 <\/strong>Ryan Lysek rose to become vice president of his fifth-grade class at Lorraine Academy in Buffalo, New York, after the sitting veep got bounced for saying things that went against the school\u2019s anti-bullying rules. So the 10-year-old is a little puzzled that candidates running to lead the entire country can get away with name-calling and foul language.<\/p>\n

The nasty personal tweets and sound bites of the 2016 Republican presidential campaign are reverberating in classrooms, running counter to the anti-bullying policies that have emerged in recent years amid several high-profile suicides.<\/p>\n

For teacher David Arenstam\u2019s high school class in Saco, Maine, the campaign has been one long civics lesson: \u201cCan you really ban a whole group of people from coming into the country?\u201d the students will ask, or \u201cWhat\u2019s the KKK, and do they still really exist?\u201d<\/p>\n

But mostly, Arenstam said, when it comes to Republican Donald Trump, students \u201ccan\u2019t believe nobody calls him on the carpet the way that they would be called on the carpet if they said those things.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s Donald Trump calling Ted Cruz a \u201closer\u201d and a \u201cliar\u201d and singling out Muslims and Mexicans for criticism. And there\u2019s Marco Rubio mocking Trump\u2019s \u201cworst spray tan in America\u201d and calling him a \u201ccon artist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cruz says nearly every day on the campaign trail, \u201cI don\u2019t respond to insults\u201d and he has been careful not to engage when Trump and others call him names. But during the Jan. 28 Republican debate which Trump didn\u2019t attend, it was Cruz who made some quasi-insults he said Trump would have lobbed: \u201cLet me say I\u2019m a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly,\u201d Cruz said, snickering that he was getting \u201cthe Donald Trump portion out of the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, jumped into the fray, branding him \u201ca phony, a fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cImagine your children and your grandchildren acting the way he does,\u201d Romney said. \u201cWould you welcome that?\u201d<\/p>\n

In the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have focused more on policy than on each other. The Republican race is a different story.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf students are following this election \u2014 and they should be \u2014 we have a lot of re-educating to do,\u201d Buffalo school administrator Will Keresztes said. Much of the rhetoric would violate not only the district\u2019s code of conduct, he said, but the state\u2019s Dignity for all Students Act.<\/p>\n

The conflict landed on Sioux City, Iowa, Superintendent Paul Gausman\u2019s doorstep after Trump decided to hold a campaign rally in a school building. The move sparked a protest from some students \u2014 who cited their own anti-bullying rules in trying to stop it.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe makes people at his events think that saying the kinds of things he does to other people is OK. It\u2019s not OK,\u201d protest organizer Ismael Valadez of neighboring South Sioux City, Nebraska, said at the time.<\/p>\n

In the end, it was the idea of free speech, the right to assemble and policies against discriminating based on something someone said or did that prevailed, Gausman said this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very proud of our students for the way they engaged in the political process in a respectful manner, and I think they made their point,\u201d said the superintendent.<\/p>\n

This is not the first campaign to get ugly, but educators, parents and students say this one is particularly challenging because often the biggest applause lines and headline-grabbers fly in the face of appeals for students be respectful and kind.<\/p>\n

Pickerington, Ohio, school counselor Kris Owen said students should be reminded that potential colleges and employers won\u2019t find a Twitter feed full of insults as amusing as some have found the candidates\u2019. She suggested using the comments as conversation starters.<\/p>\n

\u201cSay, \u2018Listen, how would you feel if someone was saying these things about you? How could this person approach it differently or why don\u2019t you all develop your own campaigns using positive tools instead of the negativity?\u2019\u201d said Owen, who was recognized at the White House last month as a School Counselor of the Year finalist.<\/p>\n

Candidates \u201cneed to think of what\u2019s important, the issues, not whether one gets a spray tan. It\u2019s just ridiculous,\u201d Ryan Lysek\u2019s mother, Cindy Lysek, said.<\/p>\n

Ryan\u2019s teacher at Lorraine Academy worries about the future of the bullying prevention efforts promoted by President Barack Obama in recent years, which included a 2011 White House anti-bullying summit and a 2010 YouTube video for the \u201cIt Gets Better\u201d project aimed at bullied gay youth.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we have these people that want to be president that are completely turning it around and sending this horrible message to all of America that I\u2019m a bully and that\u2019s how I want to get into the presidency,\u201d said Kelly Gasior, who organizes an anti-bullying 5K at the school each year. \u201cWhat are they going to do with the bullying problem that\u2019s going in schools?\u201d<\/p>\n

During a debate before the fifth grade class elections, the moderator asked candidates to say nice things about a rival\u2019s ideas. Olivia Mashtaire, another of Gasior\u2019s students, praised a classmate\u2019s call to clean up the courtyard.<\/p>\n

The 10-year-old was elected president.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t have any rude comments in my head,\u201d she said. \u201cI liked everybody\u2019s ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n

__<\/p>\n

Associated Press reporter Will Weissert in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BUFFALO, N.Y. \u2014 Ryan Lysek rose to become vice president of his fifth-grade class at Lorraine Academy in Buffalo, New York, after the sitting veep got bounced for saying things that went against the school\u2019s anti-bullying rules. So the 10-year-old is a little puzzled that candidates running to lead the entire country can get away […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-34162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34162"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=34162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}