As a part of Ohio legislature’s new SAVE Students Act, grades 6-12 must dedicate three class bells each year to the topics of social inclusion, violence prevention and suicide awareness. 

“When I was in school, bullying happened, seclusion happened, and it was just considered part of high school life,” Brian Meeron, a math teacher, said. “I didn’t feel like there was an effort to curb or stop it, it was just that you had to learn to live in your environment as best you could.”

CPS has chosen to use the “Start With Hello” program, created by the non-profit organization Sandy Hook Promise, whose goal is to help prevent violence through legislation and education.

“I think an effective anti-bullying program would be good at any academic [level] or even beyond [that], because it still happens beyond school,” Meeron said. “I’m glad we’re focusing on it, [because] there’s really no other place we can focus on it other than school. It’s the only place where we can get everybody together.”

However, during the social inclusion session on Jan. 17, many students and faculty felt that the video, which was made over Zoom during the pandemic, and the packet had good intentions but lacked quality.

“The people I talked to said [the video] was cheesy, cringy and a few people thought it was funny,” Jackson Riddle, ‘26, said. “I didn’t really talk to anybody that was super touched by it or changed their behavior based on what they heard in that video. ”

Many students felt that they were being talked down to and that the video was designed to  educate much younger students on how to be inclusive and as a result was ineffective in conveying its intended message to high school students.

“I think it would be a lot better if we could focus on peer to peer programs,” Meeron said. “Peer pressure right now, in many places across the country, is being used for bullying, but if there was a program out there that could be developed where peers actually help each other, that’s also peer pressure, but in a positive sense.” 

With one more session on the way covering suicide awareness and prevention, many are wondering if “Start With Hello” will be able to appropriately tackle such a serious topic.

“I think it’s obviously a very complex issue that’s going to be difficult to solve at this level,” Riddle said. I do think that being more open to talking to each other about how we’re feeling as a school would be beneficial, [but] I think that’s something that we have to start in lower grade levels if we want it to be effective.”