BULLY CONTROL

Olivia Gardner was a northern California sixth-grader when the bullying began. Diagnosed with epilepsy, she had a seizure one day in class. Many of her classmates started calling her "retard."

She switched schools, but the bullying continued, moving to a new frontier, the Internet. Some of her new classmates set up a Web site, the Olivia Haters, on MySpace. She moved to yet another school but found no warmer reception there. She thought of suicide.

The San Francisco Chronicle wrote of Olivia's ordeal in March 2007. Two high school sisters -- Emily and Sarah Buder of nearby Mill Valley -- read it and decided to help Olivia.

"We were absolutely appalled by the extent of the bullying," said Emily, 16. "The fact that people had gone to the length of creating an "I Hate Olivia" Web site was just really ridiculous to us, and we didn't think that Olivia warranted that kind of cruelty. We just wanted to make sure that she knew that everything was going to be OK for her."

They decided to launch a letter-writing campaign in which their classmates would write letters of encouragement to Olivia. But first, they needed permission.

"We asked Olivia's mom, and when she said, 'OK,' we asked our PTA and our principal if we could bring it to our school. And once they said 'yes,' we just went around to different classes and told our friends about what happened to Olivia, and then we set up boxes around our school and just told everyone that they could write letters and drop them off in the boxes and that we would send them to Olivia," said Sarah, 18, now a freshman at New York University.

As the idea gained popularity, more and more schools became involved. Soon, the media picked up the story.

"I guess CNN told the story," Sarah said. "So it just kept on, you know, progressing and progressing with the publicity."

Soon Anderson Cooper 360° and The Today Show began reporting on Olivia's plight and the girls' campaign. Letter and e-mails poured in from all over the world with best wishes for Olivia.

The campaign started in March 2007, and the girls met with Olivia about a month later. "We spoke to a girls group about bullying, and she was there to share her experiences and we were there just kind of to support her," Emily said.

As the letters came in, the sisters would scan them before passing them on to Olivia. They handed them over a few at a time so she wouldn't feel overwhelmed. She and her mother were both touched by the outpouring of support.

"She wasn't used to having people be so nice to her daughter," Sarah explained. "But once we got to know her and she felt more comfortable with it, she was really supportive and happy."

The thousands of letters had an effect on Olivia and helped bring her out of her depression, the girls said. They continue to see her regularly and have become great friends.

HarperCollins approached the girls to discuss compiling the letters into a book. Since many of the letters were from people who used to be bullies and now feel remorse, they decided to include them in the book, as well as those from people who had experiences similar to Olivia's.

"One of the most inspiring letters, to me, was from a bully who was looking back on what she'd done to a girl in middle school. And she felt so horrible about it that she actually wound up writing the girl a letter. And later on she ran into the girl's brother and the brother thanked her for everything that she'd done because it got the girl back on track," Emily said.

That note is included in "Letters to a Bullied Girl: Messages of Healing and Hope," which was published in August and is available at major booksellers.

Olivia has reconciled with at least one of her old tormenters. However, the sisters do not know if anyone else has apologized. Emily said, "What we've learned from the letters from the bullies is that so many of them do feel guilty still, however many years later in their lives."

Sometimes bullying starts as teasing. To Emily and Sarah, both are unacceptable. "I think it's kind of a fine line, which is why it should just be eliminated altogether," Sarah said. "I think teasing someone can be considered playful, but at the same time you never know how the person you're teasing is going to take it."

Though they don't have any personal experience with bullying, they still believe that schools should have a zero tolerance policy with it. Sarah said, "We just feel like there is not a big enough punishment right now, and so there's not really motivation for kids to stop bullying because nothing happens to them when they do."

Sarah and Emily believed that in Olivia's case, the punishment for the bullies was too lenient. "The adults in her situation, they just didn't know how to punish the kids," Sarah said. "They didn't know what was serious and what wasn't, and they just didn't know how to approach the situation, which is why it got so serious for Olivia."

In addition to adequate punishment, Emily says that education is vital to extinguish bullying. "The more people know about bullying, the more it's talked about, the more people can be able to share their experiences to help others. People can look out for it happening and people will know what to do when they see it, so it can kind of be taken care of."

ASSISTANT EDITORS: Keenen Brannon, 14; Joe St. Claire, 15; Reginetta White, 15.

Copyright 2008 Y-Press