That has been said a number of times on these bullying threads: If the things that were done to bullied children in school were done in the workplace, there would be lawsuits, court cases, etc. Who would be responsible in the workplace? I'd imagine it would go right up the chain of command to the boss and/or owner of the company. Principals and school boards should be responsible for the children in their care. Maybe if a parent of a bullied child went to the police, and documented the abuse, and named the principal and school board in a lawsuit, we'd begin to see changes.

In this case, schools are closer to prisons than anything else. If it happens inside school grounds, it's handled internally (which often means it's ignored), and the people running the school would prefer it if none of the rules of the outside world applied.

Yeah, good luck with that. If minors get away with murder on account of their age-- and they routinely do-- no one's going to start getting thrown in the slammer for punching the gay kid from math class. Can't exactly see your average cop taking those reports seriously, either.

Changing school policies though - making them tougher and stricter? Well, that's another thing.

I hate to say it, but at my high school, the teachers that actually stood up for something -- actually stood up to anti-gay bullshit, were told to stay out of students' business. Being from a small town, we were told that having a GSA wasn't a "necessity".

That said, if anyone had treated the native kids the way they treated the queer kids, they would've had their asses suspended. It's fucked.

Talk to you this afternoon!

That's because you are having a hard time removing emotion from the equation, which is understandable.

All sorts of activity happen at schools that are addressed by school authorities with detention, suspension and expulsion that might be handled by juvenile criminal courts if the activity occurred off campus.

All situations of bullying, while reprehensible, do not rise to the level of criminal activity. Kids get into fights, kids bully; kids are can be insensitive, cruel, little bastards.

Schools should enforce their regulations. Bullying education should be conducted and kids who bully other children, be they LGBT, straight or not yet aware of their sexuality, and should be punished according to school regulations. If school administrations don't do this they should be held accountable by their districts, their parents, their children and if necessary the civil courts.

@7 - Maybe if the laws were applied in schools the same way they're applied in the world outside, kids would be arrested for violent assault and not for using the f-word.

and Hover Dog @3 beat me to it. From the outside, the things that happen to you in school/prison are too often considered just part of the school/prison experience, and should somehow build character/teach you a lesson.

Assault is a crime. Threats are a crime. Aiding and abetting assault and threats are a crime. Prosecute!

If your kid is assaulted at school, there is nothing stopping you from contacting the police and filing charges.

And no one, whether they are a school administrator or not, should be prosecuted for not reporting an assault. Fired? Maybe, depending on the circumstances. Prosecuted? No, that would be a fundamental violation of civil rights.

@6: They were raging dicks in that they beat someone up, yes, but you go a little far in calling it "attempted murder".
The point is that white students who committed comparable offenses were given much more lenient treatment than the black kids making up the Jena Six.
Problem?

Am I the only one who is wondering where the parents of these kids are? While I understand that the school should be held accountable for what happens at school - and they definitely should be - why does no one bring up the fact that the kids who are bullying others have parents that are obviously not doing their jobs? Everybody is busy saying that schools are not doing enough but why isn't anyone bringing up the parents? It's not up to the schools to raise your kids. You decided to have them and you should have to teach them about personal responsibility and respect for others. In all the reporting I've seen in the last few years about all these bullying cases, no one ever mentions the bullying kids' parents and the role they have in all this.

@5 "That said, if anyone had treated the native kids the way they treated the queer kids, they would've had their asses suspended. It's fucked."

That would probably be the case here, too, but why? Because the administrators care more about native kids? Doubtful. I think it's because the schools know the tribal council will slap their asses with lawsuits if that happens, and they have years of oppression to back them up in the court of public opinion. All bullied kids deserve that level of "I've got your back" from parents and community.

@9 "All situations of bullying, while reprehensible, do not rise to the level of criminal activity. Kids get into fights, kids bully; kids are can be insensitive, cruel, little bastards."

I disagree. I think knocking someone down a flight of stairs is a definable act in and of itself. Why is it just "bullying" in a school, but it's an "assault" when it happens downtown? While it's ridiculous to come down hard on a kid for swearing in the lunchroom, I think it sends a really sad message to kids that they are unworthy of the same protection under the law that adults are.

When my daughter had a classmate repeatedly slam a chair into her leg, giving her a grapefruit sized bruise, I called the parent of the other child, and said my next phone call would be to the RCMP if he touched her again (had given up on the principal by that time.) The kid never even looked at her again. If I had just let things take their natural "school rules" course, I have no doubt the assaults would have continued.

@ 9 You are misreading my sentence. Are you claiming that all bullying rises to the level of criminal activity? The sentence you quote from does not make the claim that all cases of bullying do not rise to the level of criminal activity. Instead I state that not all cases rise to that level, some clearly do.

I applaud the action you took when your daughter was bullied, but as upsetting as that situation must have been for your family your personal experience alone is not a strong argument for prosecuting all students that engage in bullying, be it physical, online or verbal.

@ 9 Sorry, one more thought. The example of your daughter's case of bullying and how you addressed does set a good example for other parents. If the administrators at their schools aren't dealing with the issue effectively they should seek help from others be that at the school district level or criminal/civil authorities.

Sargon Bighorn #2 claimed:

high school is a world unto it self. The US Supreme Court has determined that HighSchool students do not have free speech rights (Bong hit for Jesus) like the rest of us here on the outside.

I'm not even American and I know that's false. Actually, the US Supreme Court has consistently held that students' free speech rights do not get left outside the school gates, and that there has to be a very good reason for curtailing them. That's precisely why gay students consistently win when they are forced to take their schools to court to protect their right to take same-sex dates to prom.

I'm not sure what your point was anyway; that somehow students have fewer rights on campus? Certainly in some respects they're subject to restrictions on their freedoms, but there's nothing that prevents them from enjoying the same rights to physical safety as everyone else except a culture that views bullying as qualitatively different from other types of assault.

@18 I'm pretty sure no one is saying that all bullying should be prosecuted. The general argument is that if it would be assault when not in a school, it should be assault in a school. Calling someone names or ostracizing them in the lunchroom is not assault. Punching someone, or pushing them down the stairs is.

You react to violence with violence in kind.

The problem is calling these kids victims. When you call them victims, they begin to feel like victims.

It doesn't matter if they're gay, fat, black, white, orange, whatever. They can all learn how to take (and throw) a punch. Someone messes with you? Knock out one of his fucking teeth.

Kids should learn early that no one in this world will give you a goddamned thing. People are assholes. People will hate you for no good reason. There's nothing you can do to change their minds.

Prosecuting the little shitbirds that make life hell on everyone else just lets them believe that they can rely on someone else to solve their problems.

@16: The truth is, a lot of the parents really do not know what is going on. They see that their kids are upset or down when they got home, but I can say as a former victim of horrendous bullying that the victim mentality is strong: you really do believe that it will get worse if you "tell."

The school administrators are there; they see it happen.

The heart of it is that school is a world unto itself. The normal rules of law and order don't apply. The normal rules of social interaction, choice of association, don't apply. The question of whether the institution is even functioning is answered by artificial standardized tests, or by solipsistic self-evaluations by the staff. Or not answered at all.

I'm convinced school cannot be reformed, but if you want to try, start by attacking the very existence of this isolated, alien social environment that is cut off from the outside social world. It isn't only crime and punishment that must be made to work the same as in the "real" world -- it's the entire institution, every aspect of it.

I work with high school kids in a film production afterschool program in Boston. We made an anti-bullying PSA and I firmly told them that if anyone at school ever threatens their life or makes them feel unsafe-- it's a crime. Call the police. If someone hits you, that's assault. Call the police. I don't trust school administrators to take it seriously, but kids know when they feel unsafe and they shouldn't feel like they can't call the police when they're threatened.

Okay, I do believe that a highschooler who punches someone or pushes them down the stairs should be prosecuted for assault.

But yesterday at my kids' elementary school, I saw an eight year old push a six year old into a pole. A real shove, and the littler kid (maybe his brother) began crying from the pain and shock. I stopped the 8 y/o, and was scolding him when his mom came over and I left.

Was that assault? If not, is the 8 y/o's age relevant? is the fact that they were squabbling before the shove?

@18 Maybe I did misread it, it seemed like you were saying "kids will be kids," and that schools have their own ways of dealing with things. And no, I don't think all bullying is criminal. By the same token, outside of schools, I think people in the workplace sometimes overreact to perceived hostility. The difference is, outside of schools, people take assaults, both verbal and physical, more seriously than they do in schools. I just think kids should have the same protections that adults do under the law. School administrators should be smart enough to differentiate between lunchroom swearing and assault, and if they can't, or they choose not to protect the students in their care from obvious physical and verbal assaults, then yes, I think they should be held accountable. And firing them? Obviously you guys haven't lived through teachers from hell who couldn't be removed with a gallon of grease and a crowbar. It would easier to name them in a lawsuit.

@23: Yes, we absolutely do "rely on someone else to solve [our] problems."

It's called the Leviathan (government), and it saves us from a life that is short, nasty, and brutish.

Or do you not call the police when you've been the victim of a crime?

19: It's really very simple:

One of those acts is sending nude photos to your boyfriend or girlfriend. It's mildly stupid but is not harmful to other people, and will seldom result in permanent injury or emotional trauma.

The OTHER act is beating the shit out of a kid. It is more than just stupid and can be very harmful to other people, often causing injury and emotional trauma.

I don't know about you, but one of those things sounds a lot worse, and a lot more like a violent crime. So no, it's not inconsistent to prosecute one and not the other.

And the whole "kids will be kids" dismissal is no excuse. These aren't six-year-olds. By the time you're 12, 13, 17, you're still no genius, but you are just a few measly years from full adulthood. You should at least know better than to systematically abuse your peers, physically or emotionally. I sure as hell knew better than to beat the shit out of my classmates at that age, and so did the vast majority of my classmates. Youth is no excuse for violence at that point.

@23
Not everyone will be able to physically best their bullies--should the 128 lb girl I had in class a few years ago have tried to knock the teeth out of members of the football team who were bullying her? Also, if a kid has a pattern of violent reactions (even if "justified") he or she is likely to be suspended or expelled. Some schools do work hard to address bullying--they should be examples.

@ 19, there's a difference indeed.

With regard to point 1, well, kids who send naked pictures of each other around SHOULD be prosecuted, but not as sex offenders. They should be charged for the same crimes that an adult would be charged with for sending a picture of a PEER. Harassment maybe? And a kid taking a picture of him/herself naked should not be prosecuted, just as an adult would not be - but yes, counseling is called for because there's something wrong, clearly. But they shouldn't be charged as a sex offender for a picture of their own body. Kids sending pictures of each other and whatnot are not likely to be child sex predators later on - they're interacting at a peer level, not preying on someone younger, even if they are committing a kind of violation on the other person. Do we really want to fill our sex offender registries with people who were passing around nekkid pictures of each other as kids? Heck, by that standard, the nude self-portrait I did as a 17-year-old could have gotten me arrested. In this case, the laws are messed up.

With regard to point 2, assault is assault. Charge them as juveniles or whatever, but it's a crime, wherever it happens. As Dan points out, a 16-year-old who did anything to an adult at a mall would be charged with crime, so why not the same thing for assaulting one of their peers in school? In this case, the laws work just fine - and they should be applied.

Minors should be cut some slack by being charged as juveniles, but

@23: My initial reaction is somewhat similar: learn to stand up for yourself. That's what I did, and it worked out great. (As an aside to @30, neither cops nor teachers will take your side when you're a minority who gets in fights with bullying white kids.)

But. As @32 pointed out, not everyone is able to fight back. More importantly, not everyone has to fight back. Most kids make it through school only being subject to minor bullying, not the protracted, years-long ordeals that "outsider" children are subjected to. Why do we expect a handful of kids to demonstrate superhuman resilience?

I agree we shouldn't swoop in if a kid gets called names once. But getting called names for years without any social support is a bit beyond the pale.

@16 Natasha wrote, "You decided to have them and you should have to teach them about personal responsibility and respect for others."

Unfortunately, many kids are not the result of a decision to have them, but the result of a decision to not have an abortion, and to not give the child that resulted from an unintended/unwanted pregnancy up for adoption to someone who actually wants them and will be responsible parent(s).

So, unfortunately, it is often the people who are the most irresponsible that become parents.

And do you think that if YOUR kid was the bully, who was bullying others that your kid would tell you about it? Whose responsibility would it be to tell you that your kid is a bully?

And if your kid was the one being bullied, would s/he give you the names of the kid(s) bullying her/him?

This happened to my son (many years ago). There was this "one kid" that kept talking shit to him. I asked who he was so I could report it to the principal, but he wouldn't tell me. I called anyway, and told the principal that my son was being harassed, but wouldn't tell me who was doing it. The next day, my son told me he'd punched the kid. My son had an advantage in being able to deliver such a punch that he didn't have to hit twice. He did tell me that a teacher witnessed it, and he didn't get in trouble for it. Maybe it was my phone call, but maybe not.

But what if he'd been a small, skinny kid that didn't know how to pack a punch like that?

@36 You might consider registering before you call regular registered commenters "trolls." You know, hyposcrisy, and all that... (And weren't you going to post some links?)

@23: "Someone messes with you? Knock out one of his fucking teeth."

Yeah, and then he and six of his buddies jump you in some lonely place and beat the living shit out of you.

Escalation is dangerous. We don't need any more Matthew Shepards.

The law is just the law. And prosecution is ultimately a sign of failure in ethics and social order. What we need is cultural change. Tolerance, education, empowerment... Schools shouldn't need to hand it off to the cops/courts. And doing so will only illustrate the problem.

My question/point: Pointing out that a crime is a crime is one thing. But, what actually needs to change? It Gets Better is one step. GSA's another. What else?

@38: No, not fighting is dangerous: it makes you a target. If you can fight, you should.

It's important to recognize the significant differences between being the target of the bully and being the target of sociopaths. A bully is just looking for someone to beat up to show how tough he is. It's alpha dog bullshit. The McKinneys and Hendersons of the world, on the other hand, are looking for someone matching a specific description to kill to satisfy their sociopathic impulses.

The bully needs to publicly torment you to gain status. The sociopath needs to secretly kill you so that he can get away with it. The bully doesn't care who he beats up so long as he beats up someone. The sociopath is obsessively driven to kill certain types of people. The bully is motivated by a need to increase social status. The sociopath is motivated by an urge to cause pain and death.

Which means that while you don't want to antagonize the sociopath, you should stand up to the bully. Beating you up with six buddies doesn't confer status; anyone can win that fight. Further, bullies look for the weakest targets. If you show some fang and claw, the bully will move on to someone else. He doesn't really have anything against you, after all, he just needs someone weaker to pick on.

This "never fight ever" mentality is great for adults and probably OK for girls, who are generally not subject to the same type of physical abuse. But growing up a boy means you sometimes need to defend yourself, at least in certain environments.

I'm having a little trouble combining these 2 theories of adolescent behavior into a consistent viewpoint.

That's because you're a sociopath. HTH, HAND.

I don't understand -- if you can sue anyone for anything in the USA, why the hell can't you sue the pants off parents of bullies who assault your children?? If aloof parents who fail to restrain their thuggish offspring suddenly get served with six-figure judgements, won't that get things a-changing? (That, and lawsuits against the schools themselves.)

Otherwise, you are butting up against ingrained cultural attitudes, kinda like when people defend fighting in hockey. Sure, it's reprehensible and has nothing to do with the game itself. But to change it would ruin the flavor and feel of the sport. Blah blah blah.

I agree with this idea. Administrators and teachers are already required to report any suspicion of physical or sexual abuse of children. If the abuse happens at school, between students, how does it not count? If the students who are attacked and beat up were treated like that at home, Social Services and the police would be all over it, or reports would be filed at the minimum. But send the kids to school, and somehow the definition of physical abuse no longer applies.

@45: I'll just leave this here.

We may finally see some legal action now that enough of this shit has come to light. Two lawsuits, though still nothing from the po-lice: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101008/ap_o…

I read these and just wonder what the fuck is wrong with people. My high school had some minor taunting, but nothing like this as far as I saw. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that our theater department was WAY more popular than our athletics programs: a lot of our "misfits" were celebrity-class school citizens.

Hmm, a few things jump to mind.

Schools, public schools in particular, are very unlike workplaces with employees. First, (the vast majority of) students are minors and are entitled to an education by law and the presumption they can be rehabilitated when they do things wrong. You, conversely, are not entitled to your job. Schools can't "fire" students. They can suspend or expel them (with enough evidence of who a perpetrator is), but whether that would make bullies less of bullies, well, let's just say I doubt it.

If you get police involved, two things will happen. One, rich and well-connected kids will get off. Their parents have the resources, the contacts and the savvy to make sure their kids get slapped on the wrist and sent for counseling, etc. Poor kids, especially non-white poor kids, end up in the juvenile justice system, where the interventions are not likely to make them less of bullies. And it's difficult to imagine that they'll do much better when they're through.

That said, I DO agree that schools need to protect students as best they can. I think they should have rigorous anti-bullying policies and they need to ENFORCE them. Teachers and administrators need to be held accountable for enforcing them, too.

I'd hate to see police called for every incident, but a kid who is a repeat bully/trouble-maker who does not respond to school-based interventions needs to be removed from the school either via expulsion or law enforcement for the benefit of the other students, particularly the victims.

Just my $0.02.

At what age should this policy come into effect? Because young kids routinely get into fights, and I'm sure no one is for calling the cops every time a couple of 8-year-olds roll around on the floor.

On a side note, I have a friend who works at social services. At one point a school nearby implemented a no-tolerance policy on violence. When children who are underage are reported to the police, what happens is that the case is just passed on to social services who are already overworked, and in this case they were flooded with cases. She thought it was really pointless and wasted their time, and since none of the cases serious enough all that happened is that they sent a letter home to the parents.

School is definitely like a prison. The bullies feel threatened by what they see as weak, and feel they must beat it down. They learn that from their teachers, their mothers and fathers, From us. They learn it every time someone beats the concept of "manliness" into them. TV endorses it. The movies. It's a concept that I dare say most of the people commenting here believe in: "manliness." I don't even care if you're pro-gay, "manliness" is a rather religious concept in that it's a virtue that's undefined, like God. Why should anyone believe in a concept that doesn't really exist? But we do, because we believe in symbols more than we believe in facts and real things. The shattering of a symbol is what actually makes disaffected people feel something for a change. The sniffly-nosed sentimentality of self-imposed "manliness" is a concept that is drummed into us--we're not born with it.

But when we "enlightened" and intelligent people have kids, all that rationality flies out the window. We send the kids to church, and we end up trying to raise/raze the gay out of our kids, and reinforce this false manliness into them (both girls and boys). We stray from ideals of humanism and run to the abuse we came out of. We uphold another false concept, that of "family," that we assume everyone also holds up as a symbol of everything Right and Good. Family might be the last symbol that reinforces false symbolic gender traits by trying to model "proper behavior" for our offspring so that they can be the ones on top of the heap, so they can strive for "excellence." This is what we strive for and these symbols are what we push on kids before ever considering love. We enlightened and sensitive people. Yeah, I know, people fuck and make babies. I'm talking about the symbol "family," and the symbol "manliness." It shows that the Family and culture are the greatest oppressors of humans as well as the source of them.

I don't know the answers, but there's something much more complicated at the root of all this, and I don't think we're near even figuring it out. So we deal with it one individual at a time. We know what's right and wrong implicitly, but are we ready to challenge assumptions that are drummed into us whether we recognize it or not?

49: I don't think that calling the cops for every fistfight between 8-year-olds is what people are suggesting.

It's cases of persistent, methodical abuse, such as those inflicted on the gay kids that kill themselves, that need legal intervention. Especially with teens, who I would argue are a lot more responsible for their actions than 8-year-olds.

Again, it's not too different from similar scenarios with adults. If I get into a shoving match with someone at a concert and then we both go on our way, there's no real need to call the cops. If, however, I recruit a bunch of friends to repeatedly beat and harass that person every day as they walk to work or whatever, then legal action needs to be taken. Even though they're technically both conflicts that can arguably be said to involve assault, it's perfectly valid to call for police intervention in one and not the other. The difference in magnitude is the key there.

Constant harassment and assault don't become less serious or more excusable when they happen to take place inside school walls and involve people who are two or three years shy of adulthood.

I work with kids ages 6 - 12. You often hear, from school authorities, how hard it is to stop bullying, but I don't have any problem in my Out of School Program (or at least not with physical bullying). It's easy to keep kids from beating each other up. It's easy to keep kids from calling names, and using verbal abuse. You just have to have clear policies, and enforce them. It means actually doing your job, being on engaged with the children rather than doing paperwork, but it's not hard. And not doing it is inexcusable.

It's a lot more difficult to deal with exclusion. You can't force kids to like other kids. You can't force them to be friends, invite them to their birthday parties, etc. With very young kids, talking about it helps - "How would you feel if people did that to you?" does really make a mark with all but the most hardened six year olds. But, if you don't do this when they are six, there's no way it will work when they are 14.

My kids went to a school where administration took bullying seriously. My daughter "developed" earlier than most of her peers, and came home crying one day in fifth grade, because some kids had been calling her a slut on the way home. Not on school property, and she didn't think all of them went to her school. I went to the principal anyway, to see if anything could be done, and he promised to speak to the one boy she could identify. He also suggested talking to the police. I spoke to the police, and they were very happy to speak to the boys involved and their parents. Pointed out that this was, technically, sexual assault, and if we wanted to, we could press charges and make things very nasty for them. In reality, I had no intention of pressing charges, but they didn't have to know that. It worked - she was never a target again, even years later - the fact that we had gone straight to the police made a big impact. In general, I've found that the common wisdom of "don't tell, or it will get worse" is not true - in every case of bullying I know of, telling has really helped.

Of course, in order for this to have worked, it was necessary to have a school principal willing to deal with events off of school property. It was necessary to have police who were willing to take the time to listen to us, and to talk to the boys involved. It was necessary to live in a community where a phone call from the principal and the RCMP is taken seriously by parents. I don't know how you get those things if you don't already have them.

There's been a lot of nasty talk about small towns, in the context of bullying, and intolerance. My experience of small towns has been different - while there certainly are small minds here, there are also social connections. Actions have consequences - if you act like a jerk, everyone you do business with and socialize with will know it. The intolerant use those social consequences against us, but we can also use these tools.

two words that can stop a bully: restraining order.

Bullies exist in pre-school, grade school, junior high, high school and college. They exist all over the world and have been around for thousands of years. What are you gonna do, reverse evolution overnight? Throw bullies in the gulag? If you get the shit beat out of you for being a nerd, and you just happen to be gay, should the person who beat the shit out of you face a stiffer punishment than if he beat the shit out of a straight nerd? The Rutgers student was a redheaded geek who played violin, was socially awkward and effete, sound like the guy who finger banged all the hot chicks in high school? He could have beat off to straight porn 5 times a day and he still would have been picked on.

Hey Mr. Number 54: Once again, your ability to know a few facts and still have absolutely no comprehension is stunning. If you knew anything about them thar munkeis that birthed us all, You'd know that while big bad bully monkey was off gettin' in fights securing his territory, the rest of the monkeys are all getting laid. The bully get's 'em all hot and bothered, and while he's distracted and confrontational, the girl monkeys pick the emotionally stable and secure alternative.

Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Have had a more significant impact on the welfare of the tribe than any single jock you can name. Find me a bully that's influenced the planet. So yeah, you cite evolution to justify bullying, with a little comprehension, you see it's a behavioral catalyst to make more babies among non-bullys for the goodness of the tribe.

The fiercest bullies usually go off to war/make war with other tribes, killing off his own in the process, get themselves killed, rule for a short time and then get themselves banished.

"We need GSA's?"
Dan, Beecharmer loves and supports you hundred percent! That said, don't you think you're being kind of a big pussy** calling on the Girl Scouts of America to provide protection in a case like this?

God does Beecharmer ever crack himself up!!!

**(Yes Beecharmer knows pussys are strong, powerfull... even seen 2 of them expell live humans! Though, it's the uterus that really has the expulsion power.)

I wish someone had said something like this when I was a kid.

I must add, though, that I don't think that what the other kids (or the adults around us) did IN MY CASE was necessarily a crime.

#54 does have a point. People who think that we can just make some new rules and eliminate bullying do not have a realistic grasp of the situation. Making someone into a receptacle for cruelty is a normal part of growing up. It is just that it is also a BAD part of growing up. Getting children to act in a manner not in accordance with human nature will take a big, systemic change in the way we raise them. Don't get too alarmed, though. We've done it before. Reading and writing aren't in keeping with our nature either, but we've made learning to read a huge part of childrearing and now, to most of us, it's become a reflex.

The New York Times did an article a few months ago. I liked that it drew a distinction between transient bullying, which is kids picking on each other on a more or less temporary or equal-footing basis, and persistent bullying, which is when one kid, for whatever reason, becomes the community butt for years or longer.

54: Oh bullshit.

Yeah, bullying happens at most every school. That doesn’t mean it’s normal or acceptable. Remember, “common” =/= “normal.”

As I said before, I (along with the vast majority of my classmates) didn’t go out of our way to harass or beat kids if we thought they were gay or wore goofy pants or whatever the fuck.

The kids that DO go out of their way to do this, for the most part, are a fucked-up minority. It’s not a normal thing to do, and it’s not something that should be tolerated just because it is just common enough to happen at every high school. And when being gay is enough to make more kids harass you constantly, then there’s a problem with homophobia at your school. None of that is excusable, and if the country is seeing bigger and bigger problems with it, then that’s a sign that something’s wrong with the country.

By your logic, we should just throw our hands up and stop prosecuting murder because that’s “a part of life” too (and the same bullshit hack pseudo-science can link murder to evolution). It happens in every city and every society, after all. But we keep prosecuting murder because:

1) It’s a shitty thing to do
2) It’s not a thing that a normal person does, even if those abnormal people who commit murder are "common."

If murder became more common, we’d call for more action against it, not less.
The idea is to provide disincentives shitty, harmful behavior. How is this so fucking hard to understand?

55, that statement implies that chimps that dominated would have not procreated enough for that kind of mentality to still be existent, let alone be overwhelming.

58, we didn’t invent reading and writing during the 60’s.

59, so murder is the same thing as bullying? And, murder has become more common. What has been done about it? And you realize that per capita, the people who commit the most murders are the people who hate gays the most?

@60 responding to 55's response to 54.

Umm, yeah, #55 here. I see what you did there. Yes, we need bully's and jack-asses. Evolution decided that the first time girl monkey got bothered/horny at strong emotional boy monkey and cheated with stable family nerd monkey. But just because it is so, doesn't mean that either mode will exist exclusive to the other.

10 years after high school I'd rather have my kid a successful nerd than a jock whose highest aspiration is his camero-bird, a mullet, Coors lite, and a job baggin' groceries at the Pay & Pak. Sadly, that's the best most jocks ever amount to IMO.

The strongest/smartest nerd wins. Not the biggest ass, or the wimpiest nerd. Perhaps we should just kill the wimpiest gay nerds...That would make the tribe stronger? You're a troll.

I worry when the argument is just that kids' actions should be prosecuted like the adult equivalents. Isn't doing so the core problem in the sexting cases?

If we want to treat those differently, and I think we do, the core principle can't be to treat kid activities in general as criminally as the adult equivalent. It has to be that bullying is bad and that we shouldn't stand for it on its own terms, regardless of what we'd think of it if it were done by adults.

60, is your reading comprehension that shitty? I never said that murder and bullying were the exact same thing. It's called a "logical comparison."

Anyone older than 8 shouldn't need this spelled out for them, but I'll do it:

1) You made the argument that, because bullying is common, it should be accepted as a part of life despite its implications and consequences for the people involved. In a nutshell: Common = Excusable.

2) I did five whole seconds of thinking and figured out that there are OTHER things that are common-yet-undesirable, things that nobody advocates tolerating (proof that Common =/= Excusable). Murder is ONE of those things, so I used it as an example.

3) Using my shiny new example (murder), I pointed out that when a behavior is harmful, it shouldn't be tolerated just because it's common.

4) The logical lesson you were SUPPOSED to take from this was that, if being common doesn't excuse [shitty behavior A], then there's no reason it should excuse [shitty behavior B]. Therefore, the fact that bullying is common is not a reason to excuse or ignore it; otherwise, it would be an excuse for many harmful behaviors, which it isn't. Since we punish and work to prevent one, we can punish and work to prevent the other.

There. Are you all caught up now? Good.

You can dwell on the literal differences between murder and bullying all you want, but you're missing the point. Read number 4 again so it sinks in. The actual differences between murder and bullying are irrelevant. Sure, bullying isn't AS shitty as murder, but that's why I don't think it should be AS harshly punished (and never said it should).

If you still can't get it, you can replace murder with ANY other crime that society doesn't tolerate even though it's common, and my argument will still apply (and yours will still be wrong). Here's a sampler:

Sexual harassment, Beating off in public, Mild assault, Domestic Abuse, Copyright Infringement, Aiding and Abetting, Perjury, Vandalism, Date Rape, Identity Theft, Burglary, Reckless Driving, Poaching, Drunken Boating... and on and on. Go ahead, pick one.