While October is usually known as breast cancer awareness month, on Thursday Oct. 29, CESJDS students substituted their pink shirts for blue clothing to show solidarity with a national wave of bullying prevention.  

Before students stepped through the front doors of school last Thursday, they received stickers that read “If it’s mean, intervene.” In addition to the stickers, middle school students learned about bullying awareness through a Kehillah session led by high schoolers.

Sophomore Mira Rodney led one of the sessions. She taught students how to be upstanders — people who speak out — rather than bystanders — people who stay silent.

Students began the session by writing ideas on how to be proactive in bullying situations on Post-it notes. These ideas included  “be happy,” “don’t bully” and “give people compliments.”

“Everyone had a good idea of what to do and what not to do,” Rodney said.

According to Rodney, bullying is not prevalent at JDS, but competition between students is a salient problem that could have been addressed in the bully-prevention sessions . Rodney has noticed that students frequently try to do outdo each other with their grades, thereby creating an academic atmosphere that is often discouraging and uncomfortable.

Junior Joseph Gelula was one of many students who wore blue on Thursday to show support for bullying prevention. He said that high school is inevitably socially exclusive which sometimes leads to inadvertent bullying. Gelula has witnessed both ends of this reality. According to Gelula, he has been both a “victim” and a perpetrator of this behavior.

Gelula added that that while there is not a lot of bullying in the “classic sense” at JDS, there is a lot of “discreet negativity” — snarky comments and snide remarks made by students in a degrading manner.

“Bullying is not just the classic shoving you into a locker. That doesn’t happen here, and if it does, then it’s easily picked up on,” Gelula said. “So you can’t just say ‘stop bullying.’ You have to look at the small and not so obvious bullying that is actually taking place.”

Sophomore Stav Elazar-Mittelman thought that the commemoration of the day did nothing to deter bullying — in either the typical way or nuanced way.

“I understand the concept of everyone’s wearing blue to show their unity as a body, but there’s nothing really about bullying,” Elazar-Mittelman said.

According to Elazar-Mittelman, the demonstration of solidarity could have been strengthened with an assembly for all Upper School students or an activity in both middle school and high school Kehilot.

However, freshman Daniella Jaray believes JDS’ display of unity was enough as it was.

Jaray thought that is was special that JDS set aside a day in the year to demonstrate bullying awareness, especially as she does not think it is very rampant at JDS.

Regardless of the prevalence of bullying at JDS, Elazar-Mittelman believes that being an upstander is important.

“I think that is is especially wrong when someone who is older or more confident attacks someone else who is weaker,” Elazar-Mittelman said. “I like to help if I can.”