"Whether or not schools perceive a problem, they have no choice but to embrace anti-bullying measures to guard against legal liability. In 1996, a B.C. teenager named Azmi Jubran filed a complaint with the B.C. Human Rights Commission, alleging that teachers and principals at Handsworth Secondary hadn’t done enough to protect him from five years of homophobic bullying. Although the tribunal awarded him only $4,500, the North Vancouver school board appealed the decision on the grounds that Jubran wasn’t, in fact, gay. The case reached B.C.’s Court of Appeal in 2005, which upheld the original tribunal decision. The court also found that the bullies had violated the dignity and equality statutes of the Human Rights Code, and that the school board had failed to provide Jubran with a learning environment free from discriminatory harassment."
How bullying became the crisis of a generation
