A Santa Fe High School student who is gay said classmates taunt him, push him, throw rocks at him. "It's just always there: fag, queen, queer," he said. He makes it a point to skip one day of school a week to avoid the torment.

For one of his female peers at the school, it's about lies. "I've been bullied over stuff that isn't true," she said, noting that the other girls in her class started rumors about her and exclude her from their group. She began to believe what they were saying about her. "I wasn't the same girl anymore," she recalled. "I began asking myself, 'Is this true?' "

A third high-school student, small, white and "just different" from the rest of her childhood peers, said, "I was afraid to walk home by myself in elementary school. Think about it: a 7-year-old afraid to walk home. That is not OK."

They have lots of company. According to the White House, 13 million children are bullied each year. And a recent report issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that some 160,000 kids nationwide avoid going to school because they fear bullying.

Bullying is as old as the oldest schoolhouse. It takes place at both public schools and the most elite private institutions. One 2010 British study suggests that all-girls schools are among the worst environments for bullying.

Before the Internet and social media, kids could briefly escape the schoolyard tough or the mean girl who spread rumors about her classmates when they left school on Friday afternoons. But today, the intimidation can be unrelenting. It continues day and night in cyberspace, leading, in some highly publicized cases, to teen suicide.

In March, President Barack Obama, speaking at a bullying conference in Washington, D.C., recalled that his big ears and strange-sounding name made him a target when he was a child. The conference's goal, he said, was to "dispel the myth that bullying is just a harmless rite of passage or an inevitable part of growing up. It's not."

And last week, Gov. Susana Martinez signed Senate Bill 78, which requires the state's Public Education Department to work with school districts to develop bullying-prevention policies and programs.

Who's the bully? And why?

The number of bullying incidents reported might not be a true reflection of the problem in Santa Fe. For example, there have been 23 reports at Santa Fe High School so far this year and 34 at Ortiz Middle School (14 involving girls; 20 involving boys.) And at the K-8 Gonzales Community School, 37 percent of the students claimed they had been bullied in a recent health and wellness profile.

Whatever the actual numbers, school officials are concerned.

Tita Gervers, director of the Santa Fe Public Schools Office of Student Wellness, said prevention measures are in place within the district, but it's "a challenge area. ... Sometimes we feel like we're getting nowhere."

Why do children get bullied?

"Outsiderness," Gervers said. "Others see you as not fitting into the social norm. Kids who don't have friends are the most vulnerable; they feel isolated."

"Anyone can be a target," said one local high-school athlete. He said he watched his teammates gang up on a smaller kid in the locker room. He demanded they cut it out, and they paid him back later on the field during practice.

Gaile Herling of the district's Adelante program for homeless students said many of the project's Hispanic immigrant students are harassed for speaking Spanish, for being poor, for not changing their clothes every day, or for being from another country.

"Isn't it ironic that some students have been told, 'Go back to Mexico' by local kids who have very similar backgrounds, but are maybe one or two generations removed?" she said.

"For boys, it's often spontaneous. For girls, it's usually more of a plan," said Debra Bryant, who provides bully-proofing workshops to local schools. "A lot of bullying is about contempt and an inability to accept and/or respect others."

With boys, it's usually physical behavior, Bryant and Gervers said. Girls are more likely to organize a joint effort to humiliate another girl. (But boys are more likely to admit their culpability than girls, they said.)

Some parts of campus are more likely to be the setting for bullying: the cafeteria, the playground and the locker room. One high-school student said coaches look the other way because it's always a plus to have an aggressive athlete on the team.

"Kids are clever at keeping it away from our eyes," Bryant said.

Often those bullied become bullies themselves, students admit.

Of the dozen students participating in a discussion group about bullying organized by the district's Student Wellness Action Team, almost all say they were bullied. And almost all of them admitted that they have in turn become bullies.

The student's home life may play a role in it all. "We cannot control their outside world," Bryant said. "We can teach them behavioral skills, but if a parent says, 'If he hits you, you hit him harder,' it's tough to combat that."

Raquel Sanchez, 20, a 2009 Santa Fe High School graduate, understands that. She won't go into specifics regarding her home life, but she acknowledges that outside influences "taught me that how to protect myself was to be mean to others. I would bully anyone. It didn't matter if you were a girl or boy." She got a three-day suspension for her offense.

Then Sanchez got lucky when she encountered Mary Louise Romero of the school's Restorative Justice Program. "She separated my behavior from the person," Sanchez said. "She taught me that people can display bad behavior, but everybody has a good person within them."

But not everyone on campus gets it. "What do the adults do?" said a local high schooler who has been bullied. "They don't."

How to stop it?

Gervers and Shelley Mann-Lev, drug-prevention coordinator for the Student Wellness Office, say that principals, teachers and faculty have to admit bullying exists and then work to stop it.

"The best way to eliminate bullying is to have the entire school — including the adults — agree that it will not accept that kind of behavior," Gervers said. "And if it comes up, address it immediately."

Santa Fe High School and Ortiz Middle School each have a Restorative Justice Program, which emphasizes accountability and safety without harshly judging the perpetrator. At Ortiz, the two lead administrators, Principal A. Denine Mares (who was bullied while attending Albuquerque Public Schools) and Assistant Principal Steven Baca say knowing and connecting with kids is a first step. They bring in the school's entire wellness team to work with every student who has been bullied and those who are bullies.

"Kids at this age are malleable," Baca said. "With counseling and adult support, you can turn them around."

Parents are called in, too. If they insist that their children would never behave that way, Mares and Baca invite them to witness the behavior — sometimes at a distance and sometimes in plain sight of their child.

According to Baca, one father who watched his boy tormenting others in the classroom said, "I didn't know my son acted like that." In this case, the child knew his dad was sitting nearby, Baca said. In another case, Mares noted, a mother watched in amazement as her daughter bullied others in the cafeteria.

Ortiz's restorative-justice class — run by Mary Beth Brady — includes a boy who was bullied because of his big ears (shades of President Obama). He never told anyone because, he said, "I was too scared."

But reporting is part of the solution — a tough thing to do when testifying can equate to "ratting," specialists say.

The wellness office is working on encouraging bystanders to act, "teaching students to intervene so we don't have passive, but active, participants to stop it," is how Mann-Lev (who was bullied as a child) puts it.

Anna Arnold, executive director of the International Bullying Prevention Association in Atlanta, echoes that thought. She was bullied as a child, too.

"Educate kids to speak up for themselves, educate them to rally around the victim, to befriend the victim, because that has more impact than adults investigating and punishing the kids who are bullies," she advised.

Some local schools, including Ortiz, have places where anonymous notes can be left by students who wish to report bullying behavior. Others, including the private St. Michael's High School and Desert Academy, have student-led movements to end bullying.

Starting young

Bryant believes intervention begins in kindergarten. That's why she does her own puppet version of the Punch and Judy show — minus the punch. Her puppets are Impulsive Puppy, a general nuisance who likes to steal other kids' toys, and Slow-Down Snail, who thinks about the consequences before he acts. The kids in Tina Aguilar's kindergarten class at Aspen Community Magnet School are mesmerized with the show: They've seen Bryant at work before and know the scenario.

An educator in the public-school system for 16 years, Aguilar hasn't seen bullying at the kindergarten level yet. "What's missing is malice," she said. "There's not the intent to hurt someone. It's more of a reaction. So I feel our grade level is the place to start this. If you start now, and keep it up at each grade level, it has to sink in. Debra lays the groundwork, and it's our responsibility as teachers to keep it going."

Mike Lee, principal at Gonzales, has begun encouraging student intervention in bullying situations. But it doesn't always work. Recently, one basketball player made a racist remark about another player. None of the other 14 players on the team said a thing. Lee said he "read them all the riot act."

Peers can make the difference, a Gonzales student said. "We have to get more people to say, 'Stop, that's not right,' " she said.

Bryant agreed everyone has to say, "That's not right."

She expects the federal government to play more of a role in the issue, and noted that the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico joined a class-action lawsuit against Española Public Schools and private security firm ProSec Services on behalf of the "Española Eight," a group of students who suffered bullying at Española schools.

Parents are fighting back with lawsuits — or threats of lawsuits — against school districts that don't do enough to protect their children. The case of Phoebe Prince, a 15-year-old "new girl" at school who committed suicide after being repeatedly bullied is playing out now in the courtrooms of Massachusetts.

Arnold of the International Bullying Prevention Association said that while some cases do fall through the cracks and remain unresolved despite all efforts, it's vital for parents and students to keep documentation.

"You've got to report it," she said. "You have to let the adults in the building know what's going on so they can create a plan so this does not happen again. Go to the adult in your school who you bond with the most, and tell them what you think is the best way to handle it. I hope people realize that there are always people out there who can help."

Contact Robert Nott at 986-3021 or rnott@sfnewmexican.com.

WHERE TO GET HELP

Besides counselors on all school campuses, local support services for bullying include:

Teen Health Centers (free services), Santa Fe High School 467-2439, Capital High School 467-1081

Solace Trauma Treatment Center (free services) 986-9111

Sky Center (free services) 473-6191

Southwestern Counseling Center (sliding scale) 471-8575

Archdiocese of Santa Fe Youth and Young Adult Office (English or Spanish) 505-831-8142

Impact Personal Safety (sliding scale) 992-8833

On the Web: Visit the International Bullying Prevention Association at www.stopbullyingworld.org.