can you protect your kid against a bully? and how can you effectively stop a bully? should you charge a bully with a crime? should you charge the bully s parents with a crime? how do you help your kid who is being bullied without making it worse for him or her at school? hopefully i can provide some answers for you this morning. i can make a difference. reporter: at oklahoma city s western heights high school, students are pledging to protect the bullied. it s especially important to susan lay, she knows how bullying feels. is it worse with words, do you think? i think it is because when i was little, like, people always said i was like really ugly. and it i never knew it affected me so much. and like, people would ask if i was a boy or a girl. and i was hurt. and i never wanted that to happen. and like, it lowered my
man. seth walsh of california was 13 years old and hanged himself from a tree after years of that rasment. friends say bullies targeted him because he was gay. billy lucas of indiana was 15 when he took his life last month. and asher brown of texas was only 13 when he shot himself in the head. his parents say bullies picked on him because he was small, didn t wear designer clothes, and because they thought he was gay. well, these are just four cases. there are, no doubt, many others. a recent school survey found that nine out of ten lesbian, gay or transgender kids are harassed at school, and that gay students are four times more likely to attempt suicide. now celebrities are reaching out, offering support to kids who might not get it from their parents, friends or church. it gets better. it gets better. it gets better.
some of the republican fund-raisers to help them go back to states like nevada and elsewhere, new hampshire to try to beat the democrats they re fighting very hard. a lot of races neck and neck to try to unseat democrats or replace democratic seats in the senate, fredericka. all right. right at the edge of our seats on all of these runs come november. thanks so much, dana bash, appreciate that. of course, we ll have the next political up dmat an hour and a reminder for all the political news, go to cnnpolitics.com. all right. time to head cross country. first to gainesville, florida. police there say a 24-year-old man went on a shooting spree killinging his father wounding five others before killing himself. authorities say he had a history of mental problems. next up, los angeles where the school system is considering using a finger scan system to speed up cafe checkout lines. a pilot program is already being tried in one school. the aclu and some parents say
didn t have to wait for permission anymore. so my husband and i made a video where we talked about our experience in high school, and we survived and we have great, wonderful lives now. because that s really the issue here. these kids are 13, 14, victims of brutal bullying, often at school, go home to bully from parents, dragged to church for more bullying from the pulpit, and can t picture a future for themselves that is happy. so we created these videos talking about lives now giving these kids hope for a future that is worth hanging on for. so you convey to a lot of these young people that you can empathize because you have been there, been bullied as well. but do you see that the bullying is different from when you experienced it as a child in school versus what s taking place now and how do you appeal to how do you reach out to kids who are dealing with bullying that it really is that really is at a different level? it s at a different level now, particularly for gay and l
yeah, i ve got to tell you, many at the rally shared stories of emotional or physical torment. the rally was called a response to the death of rutgers university freshman tyler clementi. he killed himself by jumping off a bridge after his sexual encounter was broadcast online. the pressing question is, how do you end bullying? our carol costello set out to find solutions. tony, it s a tough question. how do you stop bullying? is it as simple as a punch in the nose and the courtly bully will run away? experts say that s really not the solution. in fact, there are no simple solutions, but we re going to try. i am somebody. i can make a difference. at oklahoma city s western heights high school, students are pledging to protect the bullied. it s especially important to susan lay. she knows how bullying feels. is it worse with words, do you think? i think it is, because when i was little, like, people always