AlexM

1) General Bullying

The first article I read was a case of bullying in school to an un-specified student. The bullying happened, from what I took of the article, over a long period of time and from numerous different people. I believe that the group mentality of these bullies is what allowed the situation to become worse and worse. The bullying was initiated by a single person but then others were encouraged by this single person. Another key factor in this bullying that makes it much different from other cases is that the victim of the bullying claims that members of the administration of his/her school not only did nothing to stop these acts but also held //her// responsible and was reprimanded for her “behaviour”. My initial response this article was I was shocked at the fact that this person’s school system did nothing to respond to the bullying and even wrongly accused the victim of inciting these incidents. I feel, from personal experience, that school systems are often un-responsive in their actions on bullying at younger ages and this can be very damaging to a person’s physical and mental health.

2) Homophobic Bullying

This article involves a young man who was bullied by numerous other people about his sexual orientation. He was a new kid at school and had just broken up with his girlfriend and met a new guy that he was interested in from a rival town. A relationship developed between the two men and there was only one of identifiable gay man in his town of 4,500 and this I believe probably led to many bad attitudes towards gay and lesbian people. The victim, Matt P, also described different incidents when he was tripped down the stairs by “Rednecks” and also when he kissed his boyfriend in their car at a stop light and people in other cars got out of their own car and yelled at them. Again in this article the victim claims that the school system did nothing to help the bullying and in fact he said that someone yelled, “Queer” at him in front of the principal’s office and nothing was done to him. This article is made me feel very un-happy because homophobic bullying is one of the most prevalent forms of bullying in our schools systems and it always stems from ignorance and intolerance. If these prejudice people would take time to understand that this young man is just a person whose only difference from them is his sexual orientation and there is nothing he can do to change the way he is.

3)Religious Bullying

This article is about a young Muslim woman who was bullied by her peers. She was walking down her hallway and talking to her friends wearing her hijab and some other kids came up to her, spit at her and called her a terrorist. This is a form of Islamophobia, people believe that just because of someone is of the muslim faith or from a middle eastern country that they are a terrorists. The girls also pulled of Rashida(the victim) hijab off violently. Needless to say this incident would defiantly make Rashida not feel safe at school again. There was no conclusion to this article but I’m sure there must have been some kind of reprimanding to the bullies because this type of behavior would not be accepted at schools at all.

4)Cyber Bullying

This article is about two girls who had charges placed against them about bullying and making threats over the internet to another person. The age of these two girls is what was really quite surprising because the ones with the charges laid on them were only 14 and 13. There was also “some kind of action” made towards the threats made which adds to the seriousness of the charge. Cyber bullying happens a lot over msn and other instant messaging programs and it’s usually not taken as seriously as other types of bullying because it’s more private but the effects of bullying over IM’s can be just as serious.

5) Bullying from the perpetrator’s point of view This article is about a former bully giving a tell-all about her life as a bully. The way that this individual got into bullying is that she was bullied by a couple of older girls. She was physically assaulted and told that they would come looking for her again. She then decided to become friends with older girls who could stick up for her. She began to bully other girls as well as the girl who had originally hit her. After 20 years the bully, Clare, still feels guilty about what she did as a bully. Knowing other people in situations like this that have bullied before, bullying can leave an impact on the perpetrator as well and is really bad.