The reason we picked the topic bullying is because we know how big of a problem bullying is in schools across the country. One in 10 students drops out or changes schools due to repeated bullying. We also wanted to do a unique project that not many people have done before. We picked our topic by brainstorming possible ideas, and choosing the best ones off of that list, and which ones we liked best, which ended up being this bullying project. We created a model based on self-esteem. In this model, when the bully attacks a student, the student’s self-esteem goes down. Then, we realized that we wanted to add a positive agent to our model for comparison. A word had to be created for the opposite of a bully. This word also needed to include someone who goes around and spreads positive behavior, making the students’ self-esteem go up. So, that is why we made up the word frally by combining the words friend and ally. Then, finally, we could get on to programming - the most exciting part! Once we finished the Frally Model, we thought that maybe there should be a safe area where the students can be protected from the bully. So, that is where we came up with the force field. We created the force field and thought that it would be a good idea to compare the Force Field Model to the one without a force field, as well as the Bystander Model.
The project showed us how much bullying goes on and how important the topic really is. There is such a growing awareness of bullying and its harmful effects. First, our priest, Father Kelly, was doing a series of sermons on bullying so we created and presented a movie for a service. This movie has some religious content in it. A picture from the presentation can be found in Appendix B.
A few months into the project, a Memorial House Bill passed in New Mexico. Every public school in the state has to have an anti-bullying program in place by August 2012. Since January, our school has been highlighting the anti-bullying program at our school, which is called Positive Behavior Supports (PBS). When our school district heard that our supercomputing project was on bullying, they asked us to present our project to the Los Alamos School Board. A picture from the presentation can be found in Appendix B. We created another movie with statistics on bullying for that presentation.