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ABSTRACT Duffy (1995) defines horizontal violence as “overt and covert nonphysical hostility” and includes all acts of unkindness, discourtesy, divisiveness and lack of cohesiveness. Examples of horizontal violence include: intimidating body language, sarcastic comments, devaluing comments, lack of cohesiveness, verbal abuse, gossiping and controlling behavior that is shown to have damaging effects on its recipients (King-Jones, 2011). Nursing students, in particular, are accustomed to experiencing horizontal violence due to the tremendous amount of stress and frustrations experienced through nursing school. Students may regard horizontal violence in nursing school as a normal behavior for a number of reasons. One possible reason is that students witness and or experience nurse to nurse and nurse to student horizontal violence while in the clinical setting. A second reason might be the observation of horizontal violence role modeled by nursing faculty. Due to the fact that horizontal violence often goes unreported, nurses must be able to identify the behavior and seek out ways to both prevent and address it. The purpose of this pilot study is to explore nursing student perceptions regarding horizontal violence in the practice and classroom settings and to evaluate the reliability/validity of a tool to assess those perceptions. The results of electronic surveys sent to junior and senior level nursing students will be discussed. Recommendations for practice change will be offered.