When Bullying Turns Deadly Summary

When Bullying Turns Deadly : Can it Be Stopped Brian Williams Baker College In the article When Bullying Turns Deadly: Can it Be Stopped, by Time Magazine, author John Cloud writes how bullying has gone from kids calling each other names on the play ground or on the way home from school, to using cell phones and computers to harass, intimidate and humiliate each other to the point of suicide.Today this is known as cyberbullying and it is very big problem for not only teens ,but adults also. The trouble is,the technology of bullying has progressed much faster than anyone could have thought of. People
In January, an Irish immigrant named Phoebe Prince used the scarf her sister had given her for Christmas to hang herself above a stairwell in her South Hadley, Mass., home. Prince had been dating a popular boy in school and had been called a “Irish whore”. Some of Princes tormenters posted obnoxious messages about her after she died (Cloud, 2010). Todays computers allow young children and adults to use the internet as a harmful tool towards bullying. They are able to post blogs, pictures and emails about the people they are harassing or stalking. According to researchers, “ the term cyberbullying or cyberstalking has been assigned to individuals that use the resources of the internet to follow, harass, prey upon, intimidate or humiliate the targets of their intentions, through means that are hard to define and sometimes legal” (Pittaro,2007,p.180).The legality of some aspects of the crime and difficulty in drawing a line between harmless and inappropriate behavior is amplified when trying to expand the concept of inappropriate to illegal. The effort to send an unwanted advance via a note in class is simplified when sending an email, or ten or even one hundred emails, and similar to crumpling a note and throwing it away and unwanted email can readily
The remaining 15% described themselves as both victims and victimizers”(Cloud ,2010).Many teenagers don’t report bullying because they are scared of looking weak, or afraid of the retaliation. Parents can’t always assume everything is ok. They need to ask questions on a regular basis. Anti-bullying crusaders are urging educators to adopt get-tough measures practiced by one Bay State school to battle teen tormentors, including taking away cell phones and putting classrooms under surveillance. Out of the 526 anti-bullying plans submitted by Bay State schools in the wake of the suicide of South Hadley’s Phoebe Prince last year, one school reports they are already taking direct action (Dwinell, Sherman, 2011).There needs to be tough penalties for kids who are caught bullying other kids. Be it taking away cell-phones, internet access or school suspensions. According to some researchers, “one proven strategy is to invest in a school resource officer (SRO), whose main job is to patrol halls and connect with kids.” It’s a tricky job, because the SRO must own that delicate middle space between authority figure and friend. But studies of schools with such officers show