alumni My Turn Taking a Stand Against Bullying
by Kurt Anthony Krug Paul McMullen, Ashlee Baracy and David Mitchell confront the issue of bullying
W
hen a young man from Cadillac took his own life in 2009, a victim of bullying behavior by his classmates,
Paul McMullen (BS95), also of Cadillac, knew he had to do something. McMullen knows what it’s like when a young person feels helpless and isolated. When he was 7 years old, some kids tied him to a tree and beat him. In ninth grade, he was invited to join two football players at their lunch table. One jammed his foot between McMullen’s legs and invited some girls over to watch him squirm. “I was a target from
Baracy, along with attorney Richard Bernstein and Michigan “Today, a victim can be
elementary school up to my freshman year,” recalls McMullen. “I didn’t tell anyone, I didn’t fight back. I thought that’s what you put up with when you’re smaller, younger and not socially confident.” Ashlee Baracy (MS10) was a victim of bullying throughout high school. During her senior year, Baracy was targeted by girls who vandalized her car, hacked into her email account, forwarded her private emails and harassed her online. She even received death threats online, prompting her to contact the police. Today, no one bullies McMullen and Baracy; as adults, both
are respected and admired. McMullen, who works in medical sales, won the national 1500-meter running title twice and competed in the 1996 summer Olympics, earning him the title “the Pride of Cadillac.” Baracy was named Miss Michigan 2008 and is now a reporter for Channel 4 in Detroit. While they’ve found success, their memories of being bullied
linger. So McMullen and Baracy have used their celebrity to become anti-bullying advocates.
embarrassed in front of thousands
in a matter of minutes online.” —David Mitchell
Attorney General Bill Schuette, encouraged middle- and high- school students to speak out against bullying. Through the “Next Step to End Bullying” contest this past summer, students created 30-second anti-bullying PSAs. The winners, Bernadette Kathryn of Royal Oak Middle School and Shannon Stoudemire of Southfield High School, had their PSAs – “Look at Me Now” and “Become a Friend”– aired during Channel 4’s Ford Fireworks prime-time special in June. Each girl won a $500 honorarium for her school. McMullen, responding to
a new paradigm of bullying that has grown out of young people’s use of social media,
created a phone app called TruthLocker. The app archives social media, text messages and photographs. Victims of bullying who are able to produce a record of their mistreatment, says McMullen, have more power to demand their tormenters end the harassment, and have concrete evidence to present to authorities. Baracy agrees that social media and mobile technology has changed bullying behavior since she was a teen. “If you were bullied in school [in my day], home was usually a safe-zone if you lived in a good, loving home. Nowadays, you can’t escape it with Facebook, Twitter and texting. Today, kids don’t feel safe at all,” she says. McMullen believes that teenagers today have too much
power in their cell phones, given the texting, photographing and video capabilities. “Growing up, I never had a private line in my bedroom,” he
says. “I never had a private digital camera where we can post photographs of ourselves on a public web-site or a video of
34 Eastern | SPRING 2014
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