Bullying

Your turkey and ham sandwich is squished. Your Oreo cookies are missing. Someone put their gum in your hair, and to top it off, the laces of your shoes are mysteriously tied together. You obviously are not doing this to yourself. You just got a case of the bullies. Now this may sound like a middle/high school nightmare, but you’d be surprised how frequently things like this happen in college.

Residence life in universities and colleges often attempt to create a bully free environment. However their attempts to create and maintain such an environment for all of their students are often unsuccessful. Even the best college residence departments cannot prevent instances of intense verbal and physical alterations from occurring.

Bullying comes in many different forms, such as cyber bulling, physical bullying, verbal bullying and much more. It’s all wrong and it has to stop. Bullying can have some negative effects on the victim’s life. Those who are constantly bullied can only be pushed so far, where they could end up hurting themselves or even others.

Why do people bully others? More than likely, bullies are only bullying you to act out in front of their friends and other students. But not when it’s just you and them. This is probably because they want to show everyone else that they are strong or unbreakable.  Bullies love to get attention from their fellow classmates. Their hurtful actions make them feel powerful and popular. Bullies pick on students who they think are weak in physical stature, unpopular with their peers, or easily intimated.

Bullying occurs on a regular basis. Whether it is at school or a work place, it’s usually started by the same person who gets a few other students/co-workers to join in on the bullying. Unfortunately, the majority of students are bystanders who are laughing out loud or snickering behind the target’s back. The bystanders may not directly bully the target, but instead of doing something about it, they are standing on the side, laughing and giving their attention to the bully’s actions. Even though I am not a bully, I have been part of the bystanders that makes bullying an even worse situation. The bystanders are the students that can actually make a positive change to stop bullying.

Many students are afraid to report bullying incidents they observe because they might become targets themselves.  For that one reason, the school needs to find a way to create a way for students to report bullying anonymously.  Yes, there are students who don’t want the teachers to know it was them who reported the incident.  

Take for example, the high school I attended. Our guidance counselor created “The Bully Box” for students to report incidents they have witnessed and teachers/ counselors won’t even know who reported it. They also set it up where you could report the incident online from the schools homepage on their website.  Want to report an incident but not in-person to a teacher or the principal? The student could send an email explaining the bullying incident they saw or encountered.