NWACC Bullies and Their Targets

Bullies are often insecure individuals who feel threatened or out of control, and they externalize those feelings in actions toward others – the victim.  Bullies need to make themselves feel more powerful and secure by controlling, manipulating, frightening, and bullying the targeted victim.   Bullies also perceive their victims as being more competent or who seem uncertain by being calm, pleasant, cheerful or tolerant.  Bullies often mistake kindness for weakness.  And assertiveness repels bullies.

In most cases, the bully outranks the target. If the petty tyrant has a supervisor title or above, he/she can make good on the threat of ending somebody's livelihood, such as what is practiced at NWACC with their many wrongfully expelled students enrolled in their allied health programs.  These bullies have the power to expel, punish or misuse the performance appraisal process thereby taking a thoroughly competent student and disassembling him/her with a series of negative evaluations (grades tampering is the most commonly used tactic at NWACC, but they have many more tactics in their hat).  Additionally, NWACC does not address legitimate grievances.  Rather, NWACC retaliates with disciplinary actions, which is against their own policies and procedures.

Competitive environments can serve as petri dishes for such behaviors, say the experts, and bullying is often camouflaged.  It takes a system like NWACC’s hierarchy to allow bullying, otherwise the bullies would be slapped down, confronted, punished or fired.  NWACC’s group dynamics plays an important role in bullying.  It's a mix of personalities within this environment  who either condone the practice and/or inadvertently or explicitly reward it, such as is the case with NWACC’s President, Becky Paneitz, VP Provost, Steven Gates, and Dean of Allied Health Programs, Mary Ross.

In the case of the group bullying situation, the big hammer these bullies have is the withdrawal of social support and validation of the bully victim because the group holds the key to good social validation.  If the group decides to ignore the bully victim and ice him/her out by secretly and connivingly turning as many people as possible against the victim, the victim comes to doubt that he/she is a person.  How very cruel.  This is termed “academic mobbing” for which there is a significant amount of research posted on the internet.

Group dynamics holds some gender variables.  The only significant difference between male and female bullies in terms of tactics is the use of the group.  Women, such as Dean Mary Ross, tend to pit co-workers/classmates against the target, more so than using top-down power strategies more commonly used by male bullies, such as VP Steven Gates.

Regardless of the bully/target relationship, if you're of the mind to lodge a complaint against NWACC, think twice about going up NWACC’s  chain of command to obtain help in your plight.  Bully victims mistake NWACC’s higher ups role and responsibilities to right the wrongs. Victims falsely believe  that the hierarchy is part of the organization's support for victims.  When it's time in a lawsuit to write a defense, the hierarchy is involved on the defense side, not the bully victim’s side.

The consequences of bullying is brutal and often results in a negative impact on a target's health.  Thirty percent of the victimized women get post traumatic stress disorder.  We're talking about a severe war-like wound that changes a person’s life forever.

Advice imparted to bully targets is outlined at length in a book titled “The Bully at Work “, authored by Namie.