By Ted AYALA

Glendale City Council voted Tuesday night to pledge its support to a resolution put forward by the United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) to eradicate bullying from their respective communities.

The resolution comes as bullying has become a hot button issue across the country in recent years, with the issue garnering increased attention after a spate of high profile suicides.

Bullying today has slipped beyond the boundaries of the schoolyard, now taking place online as well. Victims have been tormented via social media, as well as by online blackmail.

Glendale itself has been rocked by the problem.

Mayor Zareh Sinanyan referenced the suicide in 2012 of a 15-year-old freshman at Crescenta Valley High School as a symptom of the bullying problem. The student jumped to his death from the third-story of a building facing the school’s quad area.  Investigators initially declared that bullying was not a factor in that student’s suicide. A lawsuit by the student’s family filed against the Glendale Unified School District, though, alleged that their son was a target of bullies and that the district didn’t do enough to protect him.

Another similar suicide occurred in 2013 with a 17-year-old student at La Cañada High School.

“I think all of us have come into some contact with bullying,” he said. “It seems like time changes, but bullying doesn’t go away. We should all do our part to eradicate it.”

The USCM is an organization representing the mayors of cities whose populations consist of at least 30,000 people. It was founded in the depths of the Great Depression in the 1930s to assist cities that were submerged in the problems of mass unemployment.

Tom Cochran is its current CEO.

  Ted Ayala