Our  ‘Anti-Bullying’ Campaign-
                                  It’s worth every word                         

  By: Kara Carson, Editor

Bullying is a very serious issue that concerns every school in any district or grade level. Bullying can cause incredibly horrific consequences for both the bully and the victim. It can also damage the bystander, the peron that is a witness to the bullying. 

          Being a bully usually leads to suspension/expulsion. Bullies that carry weapons get mandatory suspension at our school and, if bullies make verbal threats to cause serious bodily harm to someone, the bully will be suspended indefinitely as well. If threatening (carrying a weapon or making threats) to do those things can get you suspended, actually following through with them should incur a punishment far more severe. A punishment so severe, it should be the type of reprimand that will follow a person through life in either a direct or indirect fashion. 

          The victims, on the other hand, suffer from emotional and sometimes physical damage. This will most certainly follow them through in way that is most often hard to expunge. Bully victims grow up lacking self-esteem and self-respect. They are usually easy to take advantage of and cannot stand up for themselves. 

          The bystander, the third party to the bullying, can either be on the bully’s side on they could be ‘just there’. If the bystander is in agreement with the bully, and does nothing to stop the bully, they too can, and should be, seriously punished for the actions of the bully. This is because they are considered an accessory and if they could have stopped or even prevented the situation, and didn’t, then they are just as guilty as the bully.

 If the bystander is just there, and witnesses the whole incident, they wouldn’t normally be punished. However, they have a somewhat important role in preventing this situation from happening again. To assist in eliminating this bullying behaviour, the innocent bystander has to recount exactly what happened in the bullying situation if it comes to that. That is their ‘duty’. Or, if they are too scared to come forward to administration, they can tell a trusted person of higher authority, otherwise know as a teacher.  

Any bystander can easily bring a bully to the justice they deserve.  Therefore, this third party is just as important and valuable to solving the problem as the bully or the victim. The key is the willingness of the bystander(s) to come forward. 

The Anti-Bullying Campaign at Hazel McCallion brings light to a very dark area of our lives as students. It is important for everyone to know that bullying is bad thing, no matter how it’s being done. As we all learned from Mrs. Fletcher and Mrs. Torresan, there are various forms of bullying. Physical bullying and verbal bullying are among them. It’s important that we continue to be educated on the forms of bullying. What we used to think of as ‘kids playing’ and ‘kid stuff’ may now be the beginning of bullying actions that occur later on. 

          Bullying is something absolutely no one should tolerate. If you are a bullying victim and don’t know what to do, go to a friend or teacher you trust and, hopefully, if they’ve been listening well at the assemblies,  they will find a way to help you. Everyone deserves to go to our school and feel safe instead of feeling threatened and fearful. Going to our school and feeling safe is our right, it is not a privilege. Any kind of physical or verbal harassment is something no one should have the opportunity to do. 

          Compared to the news I hear in other schools, our school may or may not have a high bullying concentration but that does not mean we should ignore the issue. As we all know, ignoring something doesn’t make it go away, even if we want it to. It helps to know that our teachers really care. If they didn’t, none of them would bother creating an anti-bullying display board every couple of weeks.

Every assembly and newsletter helps too. We must look at each one of these actions we take as another step forward in educating, identifying and eliminating bullying behaviours once and for all.