SHORT COMMUNICATION
345
Bully To Buddy
By
Roger Behra
Finally, something good is happening in one of
America's Public Schools: It's Marina
High School at Huntington Beach, California. The Huntington Beach Youth Board
along with Councilman Joe Carchio are organizing students to sign pledges to
end a very serious problem: It's the effect of student bullying. They handed out T-shirts if they signed a pledge to "Be
a Buddy, not a Bully." Nearly 600 students signed pledges and received a
T-shirt. That's remarkable.
Bullying takes place during class sessions and
after school off school grounds. Sometimes it gets physical and parents have to
get involved.
Bullying takes place when students continuously
make remarks when they feel he/she
is not the same as them or a little bit strange. It is present in elementary and high schools throughout America, and it
is an enormous problem and especially
in the state of California.
Here is how bullying works during class
sessions. Several classmates get together and choose a student to bully. Jane Sadone is chosen. In math class the bullies keep reminding Jane
that she is fat. In English class another group of bullies keep telling Jane
she looks awful in her clothes. In social studies class a student laughs and
says her hair is ugly. This goes on for days at a time. Most days Jane goes home crying alone. She hates to leave
for school and her mother wonders what is going on. That's when parents get
involved.
Bullying is common after school. The bully group
taunts someone daily on the way home.
When the bullied person gets fed up, it leads to fighting. Girls are as bad as boys. Some time ago a father went over to a
bully's house and shot the bully.
A very special type of bullying is taking place
now, and it involves a large number of bullies: It's called cyberbullying. It's
devastating! It's occurring very frequently. It's used anonymously. Bullying
students use FACEBOOK and INSTAGRAM accounts. If a bullied person's picture is put online, it's called
"put on blast." When
you are put on blast and your picture is up, bullies are calling you names and saying other unkind things: That is very
hurtful and demoralizing to the one bullied, and it can lead to devastating behavior like the shooting at an
elementary school in Newtown, Conn. Bullying is blamed for that. Adam Lanza´s
picture: caused horrendous bullying because he was very different and strange
looking.
America's Public Schools have so many others
built in problems for one reason or another. When bullying came along on a
large scale of deviant behavior, it became the icing on the problem cake. Let's
hope the Be a Buddy, Not a Bully program becomes very effective in California and expands
throughout other states in the culture
of America. The program needs to gain momentum ASAP.
R. B.
3-23-13
