To combat bullying and violence in schools and the community, it’s necessary to have actively engaged children, teens and adults.

“The solution is not more laws,” said psychology professor Ivan Lorentzen. “The key is more family and social disapproval. Bullying is not the right way we should be treating each other.”

Lorentzen, a professor at Flathead Valley Community College, said social influence will make bullying unacceptable to everyone.

Lorentzen, along with FVCC sociologist Ami Mezahav, and Marlene Snyder, a national authority on bullying prevention, all echoed this same idea during a community meeting last week in Whitefish sponsored by the Campaign Against Violence initiative.

The initiative is a new coalition of schools and Flathead Valley organizations that have joined the Campaign Against Violence initiative. The group held its first event last week as part of its mission to raise awareness of violence in the community and provide tools to make the community and schools safer.

About 200 people attended the event, including school students, staff and administrators, community professionals and law enforcement personnel.

Professionals spoke about bullying and violence and individual groups participated in round-table discussions about what can be done in Whitefish to end bullying.

Brian Muldoon, chairman of the Campaign Against Violence, said the meeting was a first step designed to talk about the issue and begin work in the schools and community.

“We want to increase awareness among parents, teachers and the community,” he said. “We want to bring a program into the schools. It’s time to be kind to one another.”

Snyder said it’s important to recognize the three key elements of bullying — it’s negative aggression or harm, it happens as a pattern over time and it’s an imbalance of power between the persons involved.

“Children can’t get out of bullying themselves,” she said. “If they could, they would have the first time.”

She said bullying takes different forms including, verbal, social, physical, threats, or cyber bullying.

Snyder said it’s important to remember that bullying can impact other students besides just those who are the bully and those who are being bullied. She outlined the “bullying circle” from the Olweus bullying prevention program.

It shows that eight types of people become involved when a bullying situation occurs. There is the student who is being bullied and the student who is the bully. But there is also the followers or “henchmen” who take an active part in the bullying process, there is supporters who actively support the bullying through laughter and passive supporters who may not show outward signs but support the bullying. In addition, disengaged onlookers who take the “none of my business” role in bullying, the possible defenders who think they should help, but don’t, and finally the defenders, who dislike bullying and try to help the student who is being bullied.

She said about 20 to 25 percent of students are bullied and those who are face impacts on their academic achievement and how they feel about their school and community.

“We have to work to build a healthy school and community,” she said. “The community has to be involved.”

Sociology professor Ami Mezahav addressed the idea of whether violence is biological or cultural. He said it’s both.

He pointed to the tremendous variance around the world for violence. Some place are extremely violent, while other places like Scandinavia are the least violent or the United States, which falls somewhere in the middle.

“We’re predisposed to be violent, but we’re also predisposed to be compassionate,” he said.