How to Break the Code of Snitching, Snapping, and Trapping

Mark Covelle

While debriefing a complex and persistent peer-to-peer harassment issue, the school psychologist turned to me and said, "Students think the code that 'snitches get stitches' is helping protect and insulate their friends, when in reality it is making bullying worse." I immediately wrote that down, because it struck a chord.

As an assistant principal, I have heard the phrase before; in fact, I even included it in a previously published article wherein my coauthor and I noted that "'[s]nitches get stitches' has gone from a valid prison-yard threat to a mainstream colloquialism that is meant to intimidate witnesses and deter cooperation to even the most minor of school-based violations" (Covelle & Gale, 2014, p. 32).

Admittedly, we were thinking about more overt conduct violations like fighting, verbal altercations, or cutting class—not covert acts like maligning someone on social media. However, in practice, I've seen that students' first instinct, regardless of the infraction, is to deflect blame and protect themselves and their friends from disciplinary consequences. Such behavior makes investigating reported acts of bullying difficult. The immediate reaction to say, "I didn't see anything" or "I don't know anything" becomes a version of the bystander effect.

Snap and Trap

In the digital age, bullying has shifted from obvious abuses like stealing lunch money or relentlessly teasing to covert behaviors such as using technological tools and social media to inflict harm. Detecting and addressing bullying in these new platforms is a challenge for administrators, with no platform more perplexing than Snapchat. "Snaps," as they are known, can be sent to an individual or a group, and they expire after a certain period. In other words, the messages disappear. Poof. Gone. What better way to insult someone, post embarrassing photos or videos, or otherwise malign someone than in a format that quickly disappears? The recipient can take a screen capture of the snap, but the sender is immediately notified, making the act of reporting the behavior difficult. It is nearly impossible for the recipient to make an anonymous report, because Snapchat has already identified who took a screen capture of the snap in question.

The use of so-called "trap" accounts further complicates bullying detection on social media platforms. These accounts are separate from the ones students usually use (associated with their real names) and allow students to anonymously act in a more salacious manner. These accounts also circumvent normal monitoring by parents or concerned friends because they are not easily linked to the user's real name. On Instagram, these accounts are referred to as "Finstagram" accounts, a portmanteau of "fake" and "Instagram," not to be confused with one's "Rinstagram" or "real" account. Using these accounts across a variety of platforms, students can disguise their already covert bullying even more. Between the various modes of communication and the anonymous nature of the act, today's bullying behaviors are more complicated and secretive than bullying behaviors of times past.

Bullying Goes Viral

Technology is changing faster than our curricula and antibullying practices, making reactions to these issues seemingly slow and outdated. Also, bullying's prevalence continues to grow, and the statistics are staggering. An article by Marianna King in the April 2017 edition of Principal Leadership noted that "[i]n 2001, about 5 percent of students reported being bullied. … [It rose to] 31 percent in 2008. Now, at many schools more than 50 percent of students report being bullied or cyberbullied." Such rates coincide with the development of new social media platforms where such opportunities to bully never existed previously.

Couple these data with data I gathered for my recently completed doctoral work that indicated that no participating administrators received preservice training on the topic of bullying (Covelle, 2016). A case study of eight high school administrators indicated a lack of preservice bullying training with widely incongruent methods of investigating bullying reports and equally disparate consequences for confirmed acts of bullying. Participants had to learn to address bullying while on the job, ostensibly while dealing with ongoing bullying problems. Any formal on-the-job training for administrators was left to the individual school districts to determine. This results in not only vastly different levels of training and expertise among administrators, but also vastly different approaches to the investigation of and consequences for bullying and bullying behaviors.

Breaking the Code with Empathy

As administrators, we can provide counsel to both the bully and the bullied, assign consequences for behaviors that violate the school code of conduct, and refer serious matters to local law enforcement. However, the first step is to navigate the struggles of getting accurate information from students and their peers, breaking through the code of refusing to snitch. This can be accomplished only through relationships and empathy. If students do not trust an administrator, they will not comply with requests for information.

At our school, we use a foundation of restorative practices to help guide student behavior conversations. Bullies need to know whom they affect and develop an empathetic response to prevent the behavior from reoccurring. The administrator must also develop a trusting relationship with witnesses of covert bullying behaviors. The witnesses must feel that they will be protected and anonymous throughout the process; otherwise, future attempts to garner information from them may be futile. The witnesses should also understand that the administrator understands the struggle and risk they are taking when providing information about their friends. Finally, the witnesses must also realize that if the roles were reversed, the administrator would act the same—in the best interest of the victim and school safety—if the witnesses suffered similar behavior.

We can't outsmart ever-evolving technology. Nor can we expect students to abandon the code of "snitches get stiches" simply because an authority figure says so. In the struggle to silence bullying behaviors and make schools safe, respectful communities, our best tools are some of our oldest ones. Developing a sense of empathy, encompassed in an honest and trustworthy relationship, is the best tool an administrator has to accurately investigate and remediate bullying behaviors in today's schools.

Reference

Covelle, M., & Gale, M. (2014). A crisis of culture? Maintaining school values in an ever-changing societal landscape. The Pennsylvania Administrator, 18(3), 31–33.

Covelle, M. (2016). Responses to reported acts of bullying: A case study of eastern Pennsylvania high school administrators. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations Publishing. (Publication No. 10165966) 

King, M. (2017). Student centered: A strategy to match the new school violence paradigm. Principal Leadership, 17(8), 10.

Mark Covelle is 10th grade assistant principal at Emmaus High School in the East Penn School District, Pennsylvania.

ASCD Express, Vol. 12, No. 19. Copyright 2017 by ASCD. All rights reserved. Visit www.ascd.org/ascdexpress.