An Iowa legislator voices potential dangerous issues that may arise with a bill looking to make modifications surrounding the words “bullying” and “harassment”.

House File 865 is a bill that would make provisions to the terms by stating that harassment or bullying means any repeated and targeted electronic, written, verbal, or physical act or conduct toward a student that creates an objectively hostile school environment. Iowa District 14 Senator Sarah Trone-Garriott tells Raccoon Valley Radio that instead of taking a “no-tolerance” approach to bullying, the bill is almost allowing a person to get away with it the first time. She wants to do everything in her power to make sure school campuses are safe.

“Our schools need help managing bullying, they need help reporting it, they need help holding folks accountable. We know this is a problem, but I think this legislation is really moving in the wrong direction, making it harder to report and making the language more vague, so folks don’t have that support they need to make those reports.”

Another part of the bill that concerns Trone-Garriott is eliminating a current list that exists to share information with the Iowa Department of Education to identify the most common traits a bully could go after, including sexual orientation, gender identity, race or religion. She fears that if this list is removed then it can make it difficult to keep data on which kinds of bullying occurs the most often. Proponents of the bill believe the language changes will ensure that all students are protected equally. The bill is waiting for approval from Governor Kim Reynolds.