Bullying.

Bullying seems to be a rapidly growing epidemic in our society, with more severe endings than the world has previously seen. This horrifying trend is heart breaking and mind blowing. Every time you walk into a school you are bombarded with posters of ‘taking a pledge against bullying’, ‘anti-bullying regulations’, ‘safe schools initiative’… with all these things in place how is bullying still such a rampant issue? The countless stories I hear and read about all have two very important things in common: suspension and lack of attention. Most students who are bullied claimed to have asked for help from teachers, principals and their parents. The parents all seem to address the issue with the school who in turn suspend the bully for a couple of days and assume that is the end of the problem. In what world is giving someone a couple of days off school a punishment? Rebuttal: the suspension goes on your permanent record. Well if that’s not going to terrify students into behaving I don’t know what will… I hope you found the sarcasm there. Kids of all ages are scared to go to school. They dread getting up every morning knowing the problems they will face that day. They are living in agony, hurting themselves and in a growing number of cases taking their lives. HOW IS THIS NOT A BIGGER ISSUE? How are schools not doing absolutely everything in their power to prevent this? If my child was bullied, physically or verbally and it did not stop I would be filling harassment charges. And getting the school board involved for neglect. Parents are losing their children, and the world is losing young minds for absolutely no reason. In elementary school I wasn’t bullied per say, but I was occasionally teased, who wasn’t? It’s not fun and even now, seven years later I still remember it. I cannot even begin to imagine the pain, and fear that is inflicted on these kids who face this every day. If I discovered my child was bullying someone I would be disgusted, with myself and with my child. The Board of Education needs to implement serious consequences to students who verbally or physically harass other students. I don’t know if there are rules regarding expulsion, but I think that would be a fair consequence for tormenting someone every day. Even serving in-school suspensions would be better than being told to go home for three days… Something needs to change. And it needs to happen now. It makes me sick knowing that someone is sitting at home right now in agony at the thought of going to school tomorrow.