On "Unity Day," Phillips Middle School Fights Bullying

At Chapel Hill’s Phillips Middle School, this Wednesday is “Unity Day” – as students, staff and faculty come together to fight bullying.

“All of our students are going to come out wearing orange, the national color for anti-bullying,” says school counselor Kevin Duquette. “We’re also going to have a banner in the cafeteria that the students will be signing as a pledge against bullying here at Phillips.”

Unity Day is actually a national day, sponsored by the Minnesota-based PACER Center and held at schools across the country.

Learn more about “Unity Day” and National Bullying Prevention Month.

At Phillips, the campaign against bullying has taken on a bit more meaning since a public dispute that broke out in 2011 and 2012. Students, parents, and some staff spoke out about a serious bullying problem at the school; there were even demonstrations outside Phillips, as well as a lawsuit, and then-principal Cicily McCrimmon stepped down amid the controversy.

Assistant principal Kristin Walker had just arrived at Phillips in 2011. She says even then, in spite of the public perception, Phillips was really no different from any other school – but she says the school has made great improvements since then, largely because of a commitment to anti-bullying education.

“We have the same issues that other middle schools do,” Walker says, “but we have done a lot to proactively address those concerns in the last few years, namely around educating our kids through our guidance department, our student services department – going in and doing classroom lessons on what bullying looks like and what to do if you see such things going on.

“I would say that Phillips is a safe school – I think Phillips was a safe school (in 2011-12) as well – but I also think that the more educated we all get about it, the safer we are in the end.”

School counselors like Duquette have taken the lead on anti-bullying education, but it’s been a school-wide project. A discussion in P.E. classes about developing positive peer relationships, for instance, eventually grew into a wider campaign where students highlighted each other’s differences as things to celebrate, rather than reasons to ostracize.

Principal Rydell Harrison says those are the things that make him proudest.

“Helping students create this kind of grassroots movement around creating safe spaces for themselves – I think that really is the thing that we’re seeing take off,” he says. “And I’m really proud of that, and I think the staff has been supportive of that as well.”

While the anti-bullying campaign goes on all year, the month of October is recognized as National Bullying Prevention Month.