Hastings 1

Elizabeth Hastings
Mrs. DeBock
English 4
7 November 2014
Preventing the Bullies
According to Liepe-Levinson, more than 160,000 children stay home from school
because of fear of becoming bullied by peers. Over the course of the years, bullying has been
progressing to a whole new level. Although, according to Nicholson, there is no exact definition
of the term bully. Bullying is when someone (or a group of people) with more power over a
person, repeatedly and intentionally uses negative words and/or actions against another person
that causes distress to an individuals well-being (Nicholson). From Los Angeles to Hong Kong,
bullying effects everyone at one point or another. Whether the bullying effects an individual or
his/her loved one, the effects can be devastating. Society should do more to prevent bullying
through a safe telling environments in schools, stricter laws in the government that work directly
with schools, and a change in the way society handles bullying.
First and foremost, students need to have a safe place to report bullying to their school
advisors. Many advisors and teachers have only been told they can do so much due to school
policies and government laws. To ease this off of schools, the Bullying Prevention Advisory
Group had created a how-to book on dealing with the bully, the victim, the parents, and the
school (Action Taken Against School Bullying). Students need a confidential way to deal with
bullies behind closed doors. Through this safe-telling program, the education system is

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encouraged to treat the issue of bullying and harassment as a serious issue and bring it to outside
sources. Bullying does not just effects someones well-being, but the individuals daily life,
family, and friends. According to Action Taken Against School Bullying, by 2017, more than
eight-hundred schools will have the safe-telling program installed into school systems across the
United States. Students in the United States are more likely to open up about a problem if the
individual feels that he/she can do so without feeling fear of the bully knowing. The number one
problem that children and teenagers have is fear; the fear that, somehow, the bully will know that
the individual told and will be harassed even more so than before. To stop this feeling in youth, a
safe-telling or an open-door policy needs to be installed in every school. For any school or work
place to start preventing bullying in the building, the staff needs to come together and choose to
have a safe-telling environment where the victim does not feel pressure from an outside source
on whether he/she is going to be bullied even worse for asking for help behind closed doors. The
only way for students to fully operate and stand up for one another is to assure the school that no
consequences will be given out for reporting a bullying incident and that the names of the
individuals will stay confidential. To fully start the prevention of bullying, people need to take
action, rather than speaking about it. Actions speak louder than words, and that is evident in this
case.
Secondly, the government should create stricter laws about the consequences of bullying
in children. The law has subjects about harassment yet nothing is set in stone. With stricter laws,
schools and work places would have more leverage in dealing with bullying on hand. According
to Nicholson, bullying is not a criminal offense or a civil wrong. Bullying is not classified as a
major offense, yet people of all ages are dramatically affected by bullying, even to the point of
suicide. How can schools and work places do anything about bullying, to really start changing

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policies, if the government does not recognize bullying as a severe problem? Schoolteachers
have little training in what to do in these situations, and have no way to connect the exact
connection between the law, school policies, bulling, and cyber bullying. The United States has
been encouraging students to become more digital, which causes a risk for more cyber bullying
rather than traditional bullying. Children under the age of ten have no criminal responsibility,
while children from the ages of ten to fourteen have limited responsibility, yet cyber bullying is
one of the most common forms of bullying in young children (Nicholson.) The government
needs to create stricter laws and work accordingly with schools for an easier and more thorough
way to deal with bullying in the United States. Without laws with sever consequences bullying
may never end. Bullying is the attack on ones well-being and should be treated as a criminal
offense. Not only is the vague bullying laws restricting school policies on dealing with bullying
situations, but it also restricts local law enforcement from being able to fully step in. When the
government decides to count bullying as a criminal offense and starts to take action in creating
new laws, schools, work places, and communities can fully come together to take a stand against
bullying.
Lastly, people underestimate the effects bullying has on people. Society should do more
to encourage bullying prevention. Bullying causes trauma in people, often breaking down an
individuals self-esteem. Carly Weeks, a young woman, wrote about her own experience with
bullying. Weeks states that some of her darkest moments when she was bullied was when she
lost so much of her self-worth that she felt that she did not even deserve to live. Unfortunately,
many people have had the same feeling. Bullying is not just an emotional trauma, but a physical
one as well. As stated, Weeks goes on to explain that she had not only endured physical pain, but
emotional pain at the feeling of depressions and anxiety. Most people who go through bullying

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experience anxiety, or even physical bruising and pain if the bullying turns physical. No one
should have to endure the pain of the effects of bullying because the law and schools do not have
a way to deal with it. The worst effect that can happen to someone is the feeling of hopelessness,
depression, and suicidal thoughts. According to Weeks, the culture that people live in now is
waiting for the next big dramatic event to happen. The only way to stop something as big and
broad as bullying is to start taking action, rather than waiting until something bad, such as a
suicide, happens. People who are bullied are not just hurt in the moment, but can go through
years of anxiety and depression if the extent of the bullying was bad enough. The effects do not
just stop at an individual, it effects everyone who has ever known the person. Too often, society
is known to wait until the last minute to fix something, and bullying should not be on that list.
The effects of bullying can be incredibly devastating to an individual and his/her families or
friends. Not one person should have to worry about going to school or work because on another
individual. Many people do not understand how bullying can effect a person throughout his/her
life, ultimately changing an individual forever. If the bullying starts young enough, a child may
never even get to experience what it is truly like to be a kid. Teaching people about the short
term and long term effects of bullying can help raise awareness to society, and prove that it is
time to step up to the plate to protect these people.
Society should do more to prevent bullying through a safe telling environments in
schools, stricter laws in the government that work directly with schools, and a change in the way
society handles bullying. Bullying should never be tolerated. Anyone who bullies an individual
directly and knowingly causing harm should be punished as a criminal offense. Not only does
bullying effect an individuals heath and overall life, but it also effects the individuals families
and friends. The government needs to work together to create new laws throughout the United

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States for bullying to become a criminal offense of all ages. Without laws adding more leverage
with schools and work places, bullying may not ever give people the correct way to handle the
situation. Many people believe that people who bully should be punished accordingly, but sadly,
most bullies do get to walk away. It is time that the United States and other countries around the
world started to fight bullying for the better. Ignoring it now, after so many years, will do
nothing but worsen the bullying count throughout the world. Society should stick together fight
for what is right, and start taking action to protect the individuals whom have been bullied. By
choosing to create stricter laws, the government will allow more freedom for schools and law
enforcement to punish bullies the correct way and would persuade other bullies to stop. Learning
about the effects of bullying and teaching them to others can help people understand the long
lasting effects that bullying can have on victims, the families, and the friends of victims. No one
should feel suicidal or take it as far as really killing themselves over the effects of bullying, and a
bully should not get away with bullying someone to that extent. Bullying should be treated as a
criminal offense. Schools and work places should take on the safe-telling policy to allow
individuals to report cases of bullying in confidential circumstances to ease fear from the people.
Overall, society and the law needs to learn to work together to end bullying once and for all.

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Works Cited
"Action Taken Against School Bullying." Press, The 24 June 2014: A11. Points of View
Reference Center. Web. 8 Oct. 2014.
Nicholson, Alastair. Schools, Bullying And The Law. Legaldate 23.2 (2011): 2. MasterFILE
Premier. Web. 9 Oct. 2014.
Liepe-Levinson, Katherine, and Martin H. Levinson." A General Semantics Approach To SchoolAge Bullying." ETC: A Review Of General Semantics 62.1 (2005): 4-16. Literary
Reference Center. Web. 3 Nov. 2014.
Weeks, Carly. "How bullies get away with it." Globe & Mail [Toronto, Canada] 15 Oct. 2012: A1.
Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 8 Oct. 2014.