Fayetteville High School (Arkansas) - Bullying Controversy

Bullying Controversy

On March 24, 2008, the New York Times ran an article accusing the administration and teachers of ignoring violence and bullying against Billy Wolfe, a sophomore who attended Fayetteville High School. After years of abuse, his parents filed a lawsuit against one of the bullies, and considered an additional lawsuit against the district, claiming that their son had been wrongly suspended and accused of being responsible for his own situation by school officials despite evidence that other students were responsible.

Some students had set up a Facebook group titled "Every One Hates Billy Wolfe" calling on them to attack him at school. One entry by a student on March 9, 2007 wrote ""Haha (your ) Billy got clocked today at school and I think one or two of his teeth got knocked out damn my friends are awesome"."

Fayetteville High School representatives responded by saying that in these types of cases if laws have been violated then the school reports the incident to the Fayetteville Police Department, and complained that the article was "casting our school district in a very bad and undeserved light."

However, police records, Wolfe's mother, and Fayetteville Police Department Cpl. Craig Stout said an assault report was eventually filed by the Wolfe family, not the school. Wolfe's mother claims she begged the assistant principal of the school, Byron Zeagler, to call the police. "He said my son got what he deserved."

Former Fayetteville Superintendent Bobby New said "We stand behind our administrators and believe they acted appropriately."

Students at Fayetteville High School, in reaction to perceived bias in the New York Times article, expressed their opinion when being interviewed by the local news. They stated that Wolfe "brings a lot of it on himself, that he actually picks a lot of the fights" and "that what he does, is he antagonizes the other person and starts the fight and when he loses he says 'Oh I got beat up.'"

Many students, and faculty members, were upset with the fact no one inside the school was asked their opinion or outlook on the Billy Wolfe incident prior to the New York Times article. The Times did very little to get both sides of the story; choosing the Wolfe's claim as a better topic for a sympathetic read.

In a local newspaper report the following week, a student with muscular dystrophy claimed that Wolfe "likes to call him names, like stupid or retarded," and "screams in his ear, which is sensitive to noise because of his medical condition… once pounded him in the back of the head several times with a medium-sized rubber ball."

Following the story's publication, the Fayetteville School District has reported receiving "terroristic threatening" as both a threatening phone call to McNair Middle School and an email which "suggested the district would be hit with some sort of Internet or computer network attack."

The vast majority of the student body supports the administration's handling of the event and many say the blame lies solely on Wolfe. He reportedly harassed and provoked his peers often and whenever someone snapped, he acted like the victim.

One of the students now involved in the trials said "Billy would come up to me in the hall and punch me in the stomach. When I told the principal, Billy stopped for a while."

Another incident involved Wolfe making fun of a child who had just lost his mother. The child pushed Wolfe who then went to the counselors claiming he had been bullied.

A decade ago a student attending Fayetteville High School's Vocational Campus was harassed and beaten for being homosexual. At that time the administration of Fayetteville School District had promised the office of Civil Rights they would adopt procedures to promote tolerance and respect.

Currently, Fayetteville High School has a Gay-Straight Alliance, which, in 2004 was picketed by members of the Westboro Baptist Church.