Tuesday, January 18, 2011

The Effects of Bullying

I was watching the news last night with my mom when a story came on about a local girl, Tiffani Maxwell, who committed suicide after being bullied at school. The story reminded me of a quote I read on the internet by Michael J Fox: "one's dignity may be assaulted, vandalized and cruelly mocked, but cannot be taken away unless it is surrendered." I think I thought of the quote because I cannot even begin to imagine the kind of pain and suffering someone goes through that could lead him or her to taking his or her own life. I remember just a year ago when a similar thing happened to a girl who lived in my friend's neighborhood. The young girl hanged herself in her closet because she was being bullied at school. Bullying is, unfortunately, very common in schools today. WPXI's website covering the news story said, "a recent study showed that 77 percent of students in the United States said they had been bullied." The website also said "bullying generally starts in elementary school, peaks in sixth through eighth grade and continues through high school." That means kids are bullied throughout most or all of their education. Not only is the bullying effecting kids psychologically, but WPXI said, "eight percent of students miss one day of class per month for fear of bullies." Now children and adolescents are missing school because they're being bullied- it is effecting their studies. Bullying is impacting kids more today, and in more ways, than it ever has before.  I read these statistics and stories and I think about how lucky I was to make it through high school. I'm not saying I was never bullied or laughed at, but I was fortunate enough not to have to miss class because I was being tortured and ridiculed.
Words cannot describe the sympathy I have for victims of bullying and the victims' families. I have attached two links to the this blog. One is a direct link to WPXI's story and the other is a link to a Facebook page created by the Maxwell family. The Maxwell family created the Facebook page to "bring to light the effects of bullying, and to stop it" as stated directly on the website.  It is pretty amazing to see how many people were touched by the Maxwell's story- hopefully the word will continue to spread.

WPXI's story:http://www.wpxi.com/news/26520571/detail.html

Maxwell Family's site:http://www.causes.com/causes/565674-peer-pressure-against-bullying-maxwell-project

2 comments:

  1. I think that it is truly sad that someone would take their own lives from bullying. Since bully seems to be more constant than ever with facebook, twitter, and text messages, it is something that those who are bullied just can't escape. I think that this young girl had probably had her self-dignity stripped from her with the constant bullying. It is hard to determine how we can preserve ones dignity so that this may not happen, but I think that the recent media attention that has been brought to this subject can help. It's no longer "kids will be kids" and they need to deal with being bullied. I think anything we can do to stop this tortuous behaviors will greatly benefit society and preserve dignity.

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  2. I love you for posting this, Jess.

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