Final Project Day 5:

    Today I researched how bullying is relevent in society today. Columbine may have happened over ten years ago, but these serious effects of bullying are still taking place in schools now. Within the past few years there have been many deaths that were a result of bullying. Fiveteen-year-old Phoebe Prince hanged herself after being bullied. Six of her classmates were charged with criminal harassment and civil rights violations. These people were responsible for her suicide, which most likely could have been prevented if she had not been bullied. Tyler Clementi is another teenager who committed suicide after he was secretly taped during a gay dorm-room incident. Just a 13 year old killed herself after she was made fun of by other students over a picture.
    Research has shown that bullying victims are far more likely to try suicide that non-bullying victims are. According to this article, around 50 percent of high school students say that they have been bullied in ways that seriously upset that. That means that these 50 percent of students are at high risk for suicide. This is just a single fact that screams that bullying is a serious issue that must be stopped.
     Some other interesting statistics are that 61% of people believe that bullying is more of a problem right now that it has been in the past. 12% of boys and 9% of girls have said that they bully other students at least 2-3 times a month. 17% of boys and 16% of girls have said that they are bullied 2-3 times a month or more. These are significantly high numbers, especially because these people committing the bullying acts may not realize how serious their actions are. It is important for them to be educated about stories like Phoebe Prince and Tyler Clementi so they can recognize that their words and actions strongly affect other students.
    I also found it very interesting and surprising to hear that fewer than half of bullied students have told a parent. I believe that that is part of the problem. Like I learned from reading Nineteen Minutes, victims who don't ask for help are likely to become depressed and result to severe consequences. At the same time, parents and school officials must be on the look out for bullying, because as the facts show, they will not necessarily be told about it. A survey shows that 50% of people believe it is the parent's responsibility to deal with bullying and 39% believe it is the school's responsibility. Recently, to help stop bullying, there have been stricter laws especially on internet harassment.
Source: http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre2010121000&type=hitlist&num=1