Fall 2014

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Sci-Fi Fans Save the Day

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Bullied

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Sci-Fi Fans Save the Day

My Child Is a Bully?

Four Types of Bullying

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When Carrie Goldman’s daughter Katie refused to take her beloved Star Wars water bottle to school one day in 2010, mom knew something was up.

Goldman pressed her first-grade sci-fi fan until Katie burst into tears. “Star Wars is only for boys,” she sobbed. The boys in Katie’s class had been taunting her at lunch.

Saddened and appalled, Goldman ’96, ’01 MMGT vented about the incident on her blog, “Portrait of an Adoption.” “Is this how it starts?” she asked. “Do kids find someone who does something differently and start to beat it out of her, first with words and sneers?”

Support soon came pouring in for Katie. The post garnered more than 1,250 comments — from fellow Star Wars fans, anti-bullying activists and celebrities — crashing the server on the Chicago Tribune’s blog host network, ChicagoNow.

Inspired by the response, Goldman dove into the topic, interviewing leading authorities on bullying and collecting accounts from the families of victims. Goldman, who had been an accomplished landscape and portrait artist after a decade in finance at J.P. Morgan, wrote the award-winning Bullied: What Every Parent, Teacher and Kid Needs to Know About Ending the Cycle of Fear (Harper Collins, 2012).

Today, Goldman develops and implements anti-bullying training programs for parents, teachers and students and lectures across the country on bullying prevention, intervention and reconciliation, as well as digital citizenship.

And she’s still in close contact with the sci-fi fans who offered support when Katie needed it most. Goldman co-manages the Anti-Bullying Coalition, offering panel discussions and workshops at the massive pop culture Comic Con conventions, where “there are 200,000 people dressed as superheroes — people who are at elevated risk of being bullied,” Goldman says. “They seek out Comic Con because it’s a safer place to be yourself.”