This story appeared in The Toiler Times, the student newspaper of Manual Arts High School.

By Juanita Yat

Many teachers see it happen and don’t do anything to stop it, sometimes teachers laugh as well. Bullying is not a laughing matter: many students keep bullying alive by laughing at the jokes, name calling and literally hitting or pushing. Bullies tend to pick on people they consider as “nerds.” I’ll just have you know that someday the people that you call nerds might end up being who you call boss.

Its fact that bully victim can be traumatized for many years, they lose all self confidence while still getting attacked. Some bully victims are pushed to their limits while others try to push back, others start building hatred towards themselves are mostly likely to hurt themselves in the long run.

Verbal bullying is the most common use today this includes name-calling, offensive remarks or consistently making the joke about them. Here at Manual Art you hear peers call each other names. You hear students making fun of others for the way they look or for some other dumb reason. Here at school we have a lot of immature little kids. It’s not only students to students it’s also students to teachers, teachers to students, or staff to students.

In our lovely school you frequently see students pushing and hitting each other. This leads to fighting and other big problems that sometimes are taken after school.

You also have bullying among ladies. This is mostly known as being “two faced,” including spreading of false rumors or talking “nasty” behind each other’s back. Bullying tends to pick on who are considered outcasts, misfits, or losers that get crappy remarks from what is known as the “cool kids.”

When bullies tend to cause intimidation its mostly verbal and when they tend to cast a threat, it is with the purpose of making their victims give in to their orders and demands. Many girls here and anywhere tend to talk about the people they hang around with. These types of girls are the ones that tend to start the fighting between their own friends. Here at school we have a lot of “back stabbers.”

Bullying is very commonly seen on internet chatting sites such as MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, Formspring, text messages, and private phone calls. It also involves destroying or smearing the victim’s reputation on blogs, postings and also through texting etc.

Here at Manual Arts we have problems with burn books and blogs. Many people have been hurt and talked about and have had their pictures posted. Unfortunately, the dean continues to fail to do anything about the problem. Eventually, it blew over because students were taking matters into their own hands, so people that were responsible for the burn book took it down.

In my opinion, Manual Arts staff, deans, and teachers do not really take bullying seriously. Little do they know the effect that it has on students and their education. Teachers sometimes witness a student getting picked on by another student and they don’t bring the student to attention. This sends a message to bullies that it’s okay to pick on other students since no one ever does anything to stop it. In school there is no kind of punishment for bullying. I actually know some kids that get called names; like Mr. Potato head, fat, nerds, fatty, fags, Barney…there are a lot of names. Bullying is not okay and you should treat people the way you want to be treated.

The best way to stop bullying is to never let it start at all. So if you or anyone is getting bullied let them know it’s time to let someone know. It’s not called snitching if someone is getting hurt. Little by little we can stop bullying.