The simplest experiences in life can change your outlook. Mine started with a simple phone call. Answering without thinking, I was unaware that my life was about to change as my friend dropped a bomb on my world. She told me she wanted to end her life. I was initially shocked, but then I reflected on the day. I remembered walking towards my locker and I saw my friend surrounded by a few classmates and what looked like them teasing her. I just brushed it off at first, and I carried on with my day. I tell her that she was put on this earth for a reason and that no one should be able to tell her differently.
Students do not realize the impact they can have on someone when they say something rude, even if they are just kidding around. To the victim it does not matter if you are joking or not, it still hurts. Teenage bullying is a real problem in schools. Bullying includes harassment, physical harm, and repeatedly demeaning speech and is active with the intention of bringing someone else down.
The bullying in our schools has gone to the extreme and that is proven with the suicide rate among teens that has been climbing in the past few years to 7.8 percent in 2011, according to a suicide report from New York Daily news. For some reason students have it in their head that there is a certain way you should be and that if you are not the “perfect” image that television and movies make teens out as to how they should be, then you are not good enough. Thirty years from now, it is not going to matter how your hair looked, the shoes you wore or the jeans you bought in high school. What will matter is what you learned and how it is used.
West Fargo schools needs to have supervision where bullying is more likely to happen. Staff members need to take action when they see or hear about bullying. How many more students need to suffer before people realize that what they are doing or saying is not okay? I thinks we need to have a discussion with all grades about the bullying problem, and we need to do it in a way that they remember what they are doing is wrong. Theater could put on a show for all students to watch showing the plain truth about how bad bullying is getting. Maybe we need to at least have a day to bullying preventions and workshops dedicated to stopping bullying.
My friend is now doing better, but has been emotionally scarred on so many levels because of people and their actions. Students she has grown up with felt the need to tease her for issues she cannot control. She went through counseling and I still get phone calls where I have to let her know that everything will be ok, but the process is going to take time. Bullying is continuously getting worse every time a student has to say a stupid comment to someone else.