Why Aren't There More Prosecutions For Bullying?

[rookie]

You're absolutely right, L. But that's not at all what he said. What he said was

When I am a parent I will tell my kids about bullying and what to do about it (talk to me and I will go to police or to the civil suit lawyer as appropriate) before they even start school. If necessary I will give them hidden cameras to capture the evidence. Every parent should do this. If every parent did this bullying would end.

I was just trying to call him on his bullshit statement.

[TheReasonator]

OK, maybe it wouldn't end bullying but it would go a long way towards helping to stop it.

I'm not even suggesting schools set up cameras, I'm suggesting students take in their own. Most schools don't have policies against cameras and if they do it's simple enough to repeal it. If you see a crime in progress and videotape it that's fair game.

[ironbite]

You're...serious.

Ironbite-k direct question time...how old are you?

[TenfoldMaquette]

Because it has to be proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. That means someone (probably other students) would have to testify against the bully. (If it is just the victim's word, it becomes a he-said, she-said.)

As far as I knew, at least here up in Maine, "he said, she said" counts as far as the minimum standard of proof necessary for an indictment via grand jury. Or are there different standards in each state?

[Distind]

Because it has to be proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. That means someone (probably other students) would have to testify against the bully. (If it is just the victim's word, it becomes a he-said, she-said.)

As far as I knew, at least here up in Maine, "he said, she said" counts as far as the minimum standard of proof necessary for an indictment via grand jury. Or are there different standards in each state?

Does the he said she said of children count? If so I may well have been convicted of crimes not physically possible thanks to accusations others made.

And per the cameras, they're not horrible ideas. I almost managed to get a copy of the video of me fighting off three idiots on the bus, and for once someone saw it, it was caught on tape and all three of them had to find some other way of getting to school for the rest of their time there. I'm not sure how much privacy is assumed to occur while you're surrounded by other people, but even just having them in halls would be useful to catch people vandalizing things. Plus every little bit that requires more effort to bully someone means that less people will get bullied.

[erictheblue]

I'm not even suggesting schools set up cameras, I'm suggesting students take in their own. Most schools don't have policies against cameras and if they do it's simple enough to repeal it. If you see a crime in progress and videotape it that's fair game.

That would only work for physical bullying, and only for fights that last long enough for someone to get a camera out. Quick shoves, verbal threats (with no touching), etc could still happen and there would be no record. Cameras would also do no good against purely verbal bullying. Spreading gossip and the like would still be fair game.

Because it has to be proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. That means someone (probably other students) would have to testify against the bully. (If it is just the victim's word, it becomes a he-said, she-said.)

As far as I knew, at least here up in Maine, "he said, she said" counts as far as the minimum standard of proof necessary for an indictment via grand jury. Or are there different standards in each state?

Indicting someone at a grand jury is not prosecuting them. The standard of evidence to bring charges (which is what a grand jury does) is a lot lower than actually convicting someone.

[TheL]

And may I also point out that while getting beaten black and blue is a serious threat to your physical health, it's also a self-correcting problem.  Which is why bullies try not to leave physical marks, or at least to make sure those marks aren't in places other people are likely to see at school.

Now, imagine being called the same horrible names, day in and day out, for years.  Seeing people whisper to each other, then suddenly quiet down when they notice you looking.  Getting anonymous hateful notes in your locker.  Having to delete really nasty notes from your Facebook wall, hoping that your friends--if you still have any--didn't see them.  Over and over again, for years.  That kind of slow emotional drain can and does drive people to suicide.  And the bullies get off scot-free, because you can't prove anything.

[Distind]

Now, imagine being called the same horrible names, day in and day out, for years.  Seeing people whisper to each other, then suddenly quiet down when they notice you looking.  Getting anonymous hateful notes in your locker.  Having to delete really nasty notes from your Facebook wall, hoping that your friends--if you still have any--didn't see them.  Over and over again, for years.  That kind of slow emotional drain can and does drive people to suicide.  And the bullies get off scot-free, because you can't prove anything.

Drop the face book portion and add in the odd physical confrontation and I dealt with this. I was open with those couple people I considered friends enough that they trusted those people were full of shit. Didn't hurt that I'd gleefully make fun of the rumors and hate bits tossed my way after a while. The lack of creativity was stunning. More than once I sat there and gave them better lines to use just so they would have something more interesting to call me, which generally resulted in them shutting the hell up for a while. You can't be afraid of this kind of shit or the people doing it win.

I mean really, why does someone who maliciously says these things or believes them matter to you? Maybe I'm just not a terribly social creature, but after the actual beatings wound down I've always relegated the rest of this to the heap of crap I didn't care about unless I could amuse myself with it.

What else are we going to do? Are we going to drag school children to court over libel?

[Smurfette Principle]

Now, imagine being called the same horrible names, day in and day out, for years.  Seeing people whisper to each other, then suddenly quiet down when they notice you looking.  Getting anonymous hateful notes in your locker.  Having to delete really nasty notes from your Facebook wall, hoping that your friends--if you still have any--didn't see them.  Over and over again, for years.  That kind of slow emotional drain can and does drive people to suicide.  And the bullies get off scot-free, because you can't prove anything.

Drop the face book portion and add in the odd physical confrontation and I dealt with this. I was open with those couple people I considered friends enough that they trusted those people were full of shit. Didn't hurt that I'd gleefully make fun of the rumors and hate bits tossed my way after a while. The lack of creativity was stunning. More than once I sat there and gave them better lines to use just so they would have something more interesting to call me, which generally resulted in them shutting the hell up for a while. You can't be afraid of this kind of shit or the people doing it win.

I mean really, why does someone who maliciously says these things or believes them matter to you? Maybe I'm just not a terribly social creature, but after the actual beatings wound down I've always relegated the rest of this to the heap of crap I didn't care about unless I could amuse myself with it.

What else are we going to do? Are we going to drag school children to court over libel?

Honest to fucking God, I hate this argument.

1) Your bullies happened to be dealt with easily. Congratulations. A lot of bullies aren't, and it's not the job of the victim to laugh it off.
2) We care about other people's opinions because humans are social creatures. And maybe your rumors might not have been so bad, but imagine being in a highly conservative town and having people spread rumors about you being gay. Then it becomes an actual problem because, hey, sometimes people beat up people they think are gay, whether or not it's true. That might make you worry about how you're perceived fairly quickly.
3) Maybe you might not be terribly social, but know what's fucking horrible? Having a Welsh corgi as your best friend because you don't have any human ones. Wanting to kill yourself because then maybe you'd be noticed. Social interaction fucking matters.
4) False dichotomy. The options are not "ignore it completely" or "sue the pants of the little fuckers." The options also include things like "teach children not to be assholes" and "have policies in place to actually punish bullies" and "make sure those policies aren't double-edged swords that make victims scared to come to the teacher because they'll get punished."

[m52nickerson]

1) Your bullies happened to be dealt with easily. Congratulations. A lot of bullies aren't, and it's not the job of the victim to laugh it off.

It is there job to deal with what is going on.  If that means laughing it off, okay.  If it means reporting it over and over that they need to do it.  If it means taking punishment from the school for beating the piss out of someone one, fine. 

2) We care about other people's opinions because humans are social creatures. And maybe your rumors might not have been so bad, but imagine being in a highly conservative town and having people spread rumors about you being gay. Then it becomes an actual problem because, hey, sometimes people beat up people they think are gay, whether or not it's true. That might make you worry about how you're perceived fairly quickly.

Yes everyone worries about how they are perceived, but one of life's most important lessons is you can only worry about it to a point.  If a rumor puts a person in a situation of physical violence that is something more serious. 

3) Maybe you might not be terribly social, but know what's fucking horrible? Having a Welsh corgi as your best friend because you don't have any human ones. Wanting to kill yourself because then maybe you'd be noticed. Social interaction fucking matters.

It does, but for kids having adults come the rescue is not going to help that kid get friends. 

4) False dichotomy. The options are not "ignore it completely" or "sue the pants of the little fuckers." The options also include things like "teach children not to be assholes" and "have policies in place to actually punish bullies" and "make sure those policies aren't double-edged swords that make victims scared to come to the teacher because they'll get punished."

If it was only that easy to teach kids not to be assholes.  People have been trying to do that for a long time, hasn't happened yet.  I'm not saying that it can't in the future, I just would not hold my breath.  As for punishments, again those may help or they may simple get the victim ostracized even more.   

[TheReasonator]

Why do we have to lump the social and the academic together in the first place?

Maybe that's the real problem. The main purpose is education yet we expect kids to secondarily use it to build social skills even when the only thing they have in common is that they are all being educated at the same facility in roughly the same subject areas(at least for those taking the same class). I suppose there's real bonding there for those students who are that enthused by the subject, but for the most part the subject material doesn't usually become a major point of social bonding. What if we put the academic online except for hands on stuff like laboratories, and then gave parents tax credits to help their kids join clubs, all sorts of clubs including academic-oriented clubs, athletic, anime, political-oriented clubs, etc...? It's easier to make friends and less likely for you to be bullied when you have common interests.

[Smurfette Principle]

Why do we have to lump the social and the academic together in the first place?

Maybe that's the real problem. The main purpose is education yet we expect kids to secondarily use it to build social skills even when the only thing they have in common is that they are all being educated at the same facility in roughly the same subject areas(at least for those taking the same class). I suppose there's real bonding there for those students who are that enthused by the subject, but for the most part the subject material doesn't usually become a major point of social bonding. What if we put the academic online except for hands on stuff like laboratories, and then gave parents tax credits to help their kids join clubs, all sorts of clubs including academic-oriented clubs, athletic, anime, political-oriented clubs, etc...? It's easier to make friends and less likely for you to be bullied when you have common interests.

Have you ever been to an actual school? You do realize that clubs in a school setting already exist, right? That you can have clubs in school geared around common interests? Fuck, in middle school we had embroidery club, and my state's schools are massively underfunded. Also, clubs don't necessarily get rid of bullying - I was in Chorus in middle school, and some of my worst bullies were also in Chorus.

Furthermore, in-person schools have the function of teaching you basic social skills. One could argue that clubs also teach you social skills, but funnily enough, when you're surrounded by people who act like you, you never learn differing ways of acting, and so something that might be really funny to your sports buddy is not going to be funny to the local chess nerd.

[Sleepy]

Smurfette makes a good point in that public school helps kids learn how to deal with all types of folks in a wide variety of social settings. If you attend something like an anime club (which my school had, despite it having shit funding), chances are the folks you encounter there will be fairly similar for the most part. In public school, as much as I hated some of the people there, you learn how to deal with the assholes, the snobs, the nice guys, the genuinely caring folks, all types of people. People with different interests than you, people with different backgrounds and different ways of thinking. You have to be exposed to that kind of thing, because otherwise, you're probably going to experience some major shock when you graduate and discover how different people can be.

[Distind]

Honest to fucking God, I hate this argument.

As I'm well aware.

1) Your bullies happened to be dealt with easily. Congratulations. A lot of bullies aren't, and it's not the job of the victim to laugh it off.

I'm not sure you grasp how much I did to them over time. I just did so while not particularly caring about the lesser bullshit tossed at me. It was not easy, but unlike most other methods it actually worked.

2) We care about other people's opinions because humans are social creatures. And maybe your rumors might not have been so bad, but imagine being in a highly conservative town and having people spread rumors about you being gay. Then it becomes an actual problem because, hey, sometimes people beat up people they think are gay, whether or not it's true. That might make you worry about how you're perceived fairly quickly.

Or you can avoid being defensive and point out if you were gay, why does this person know that? Lived with that rumor. Shot it down like the garbage it was. In fact I believe the GSA members were openly offended that I was being called gay as they didn't want to be associated with me.

3) Maybe you might not be terribly social, but know what's fucking horrible? Having a Welsh corgi as your best friend because you don't have any human ones. Wanting to kill yourself because then maybe you'd be noticed. Social interaction fucking matters.

Yes, hence why you don't let them shut down your social life with bullshit and find people who don't suck. If there are no people who don't suck, then you're better off with the corgi. Plus there's no worth in being noticed after your dead, though maybe that's just an atheist thing on my part.

4) False dichotomy. The options are not "ignore it completely" or "sue the pants of the little fuckers." The options also include things like "teach children not to be assholes" and "have policies in place to actually punish bullies" and "make sure those policies aren't double-edged swords that make victims scared to come to the teacher because they'll get punished."

Which I do believe I've pointed out won't work for everyone, and generally are just tools to make adults feel better about what's still going on. Don't treat a bully like a prospective decent person, treat them like the malignant ass that they are. Should they actually be a decent person, yet realize they're being treated(rightly) as if they were a bully, then they may well wake up.

You're a fan of over arching sociological solutions. Only in the most general situations will such solutions work. I've taken a few classes on the basics and promptly wrote it off as a science of slightly more use than philosophy, great for an easy A though. I managed to deal with more bullies than most of you have ever met through aggressive countering to their actions and finding individual solutions to their interactions with me and eventually my friends. You keep proposing these things as if the bullies don't realize what could happen as a result of their actions, they do, they knew when I was a kid and it's even more in the open these days.

When you're dealing with a pair of children, with no evidence beyond what the two say, what are the odds that either will admit to having done something? My mistake was being honest about having hit someone, that person would promptly lie about hitting me first and I'd wind up in trouble.

I think the real core of what I'm trying to say is don't let them make you be afraid. I was scared as hell of a long time, and not one damn thing changed. Then I was told a combination of things which honestly made me no longer care what happened to me, I wasn't afraid of much of anything(which is another wonderful failure of youth) and promptly started actually dealing with the idiots rather than being hit and getting caught when I struck back at them. After a while I realized they're nothing more than a handful of idiots who get off on seeing someone react in funny ways, very little there to be afraid of.

As such I will never tell someone to go be scared, eventually we'll enlighten the entire world and there will be no jackasses, and upon that day they shall be saved. I'll sit down, listen to what they're problem is, and relate anything I ever came up with in dealing with situations on my own. But regardless of what I have on that, I would always tell them that their worth isn't determined by a few loud jackasses, and they have no need to be afraid of people simply because they're jerks. Fear doesn't solve a damn thing.