By Darcy Gervais
Staff Writer

Coming into the new school year, there has been a spin on the current WA bullying policy in regards to the new legislation that came out of the incident in South Hadley last year where Ireland immigrant, Phoebe Prince, was harassed both mentally and physically to a point where she took her own life by hanging herself.

All WA faculty and staff have been asked to look out for things that may indicate a student being harassed both mentally and physically and what actions to take if they should come across ill-fated behavior being brought on by a student.

“The way that we’re going to handle any sort of bullying be it physical or mental is that we will record every incident and if we see a continued pattern of abuse we would then prepare that child to understand that you have a potential bullying situation which is against the law,” Principal James P. Antonelli said.

Antonelli has confirmed that WA is taking the new legislation very seriously, hoping to bring awareness to the community about the seriousness of bullying and the affect that it has on the people that it is happening to.

“We need to insert some things with our advisory day schedule that will help students understand more fully the affects of the matter,” Antonelli said.