Indiana's first statewide assessment of bullying at its public schools found more than 9,000 incidents this past school year. Nearly half of the cases were verbal incidents. More than one-fifth were physical. The remainder included written or electronic threats and social shunning at the lunch table or elsewhere. Indiana's Safe Schools coordinator says it's too early to assess bullying in Indiana based on the initial data. But he says it provides a starting point to understand the extent of the problem. A law passed last year requires schools to begin collecting data on bullying incidents.
