Random Thoughts – Randocity!

School bullying and peer pressure is something that each of us has to endure at some point in our lives. When attending grade school, we quickly learn about bullies and peer pressure. This life lesson happens very quickly. Perhaps even as early as kindergarten when another kid pushes you down because you wouldn’t give them the purple crayon. Whatever the reason, it starts early and only gets more and more problematic over the years.

By Middle and High School, these bullying tactics go from wanting your crayon to making the student feel like an outsider. Peer pressure comes in many forms, though. From the person who taunts merely to give the bully pleasure over someone else’s pain to the bully who uses others to get their schoolwork done or get money.  The pressure might even force you into trying drugs or smoking.  Whatever the reason, it is very hard and emotionally painful on the student being pressured.

Internet bullying

With the advent of Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter, it’s now easier than ever for students to broadcast themselves on the Internet for all to see. The danger, of course, is that by participating in such public web sites, each person can easily make themselves into a local celebrity unintentionally. Worse, your ‘friends’ are also on these sites and subscribe and comment on your personal statuses and posts.

Unfortunately, these very public outlets are both used and abused by student bullies. So, hanging the laundry out for everyone to see invites other people around you to comment. Not all comments are nice. Some even take the form of using bullying tactics to make the other person feel unwanted.

Teen Suicides

In the last few weeks, there has been 5 to 6 publicized teen suicides that are apparently directly attributed to Internet bullying. That said, these seem to have begun with local school bullies using the Internet to harass and humiliate these students. Students still in the teen years don’t yet have enough life experience to understand that the bullying isn’t the end-all-be-all of their existence. There is more to life than school and classmates. In fact, once you get past school, it’s likely you’ll never see most of those people ever again.

College, unfortunately, does present itself with peer pressure as well, but not always the same as high school. It can present in the form of Greek hazings, school clubs and other forms of social interaction situations. As a student in College, I had chosen not to become involved in any of these organizations because I wanted to concentrate my efforts on my studies.

Unfortunately, there are still other situations that can become an issue. The dorms. Many Colleges and Universities require you to live in the dorms for at least one or two years (depending on school policy). When you are forced to live in the dorms, you may also be forced to room with someone.

College Life, Dorms and Roommates

Unfortunately, when you’re forced to room with someone, you have to take the good with the bad. In my college dorm life, I’ve had several different roommates. One would go out drinking the entire night and come back smelling up the entire room of sickening alcohol breath. He would do this nearly every night. I was literally getting sick from the smell, I had to leave the room to get fresh air. I asked for a new roommate as I couldn’t sleep with that going on. The next roommate was a severe asthmatic who required breathing treatments every night using a loud machine.  The treatments lasted anywhere between 30 minutes to 1 hour.  I didn’t mind that he needed the treatments, I minded when he chose to do the treatments. He preferred to do this after 10PM and sometimes after midnight. That lasted about a semester.  I moved into a dorm without a roommate.  Unfortunately, even that situation wasn’t perfect as I had a suite-mate (we shared the bathroom).  In this situation, he was incessantly complaining about the bathroom.  After this, I moved into an apartment with another roommate and then later without one.

As a side note, if you sign a lease with a roommate (for whatever reason), be very careful.  If the roommate leaves and stops paying the rent, you are liable for the entire rent for the rest of the lease and all the utilities in your name.  So, be careful that you trust your roommate fully.  Also, sign small leases (6 months or less) and ask for an easy out should a roommate stop paying.  With cell phones, it’s easy to keep phone service separate now.  However, utilities like cable TV, internet service, water, gas and electricity can bite you.

Another side of this, with roommates, I would regularly find my stuff missing. Supplies and other items would inexplicably walk off. This would include pens, paper, books, CDs and personal items. I never knew exactly who was responsible, but I knew my roommate had let someone into the room. This is also part of college life. So, don’t bring valuables into a room with a roommate unless you really don’t treasure your belongings. Also, roommates do finger through everything you own, so be ready for this.  Finally, don’t allow your roommate to borrow or lend out your items to others.  You will never get them back.

Anyway, this basically means, you have no privacy in a dorm and roommate situation. This is also where bullying can start.

Social Clubs and Parties

In college, participating in the Greek system may seem to make you fit in, but it opens you up to social problems. Not only does it open you up to more peer pressure, it opens you up to hazing, Greek parties, binge drinking and other college party games. Greek parties are some of the strongest alcohol pressure zones you will ever find in college life. They can also become some of the most outlandish parties.

As a young person just having been turned loose in College, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s important and why you are there. After all, this is the first real taste of freedom most kids have in the world. Unfortunately, that freedom is just an illusion. No, you aren’t policed by the university to make classes. So, it is left up to you to get your butt out of bed and make it to class on time. It is also left up to you to get your school work completed. If you don’t do this, you can’t make the grade and you may be kicked out.  So, focus on the schoolwork and push everything else aside.

Schools choose to ignore bullying and peer pressure

Unfortunately, both high school and colleges are no better peer pressure situations. In fact, most schools look the other way and pretend it doesn’t exist. Bullying happens primarily because there’s something different that someone doesn’t like. Whether that’s because of the color of their skin, their religion, the classes being taken, their sexual orientation, the clothes they wear, the car they drive, the friends they have, the beliefs they hold, the music they like or whatever, it all begins with intolerance and hate.

This intolerance is usually passed along to their kids by parents. Kids learn what’s in their environment and expand on that as they grow. If parents have predjudice, these get passed onto their kids. The kids foster this all throughout school and lives which turns the kid either into a bully or the one being bullied.

Unfortunately, no matter the cause of bullying, intolerance and hate, schools ignore it. They don’t want to know it exists and they, instead, solely focus on the school as a money-making venture. In other words, schools really don’t take an interest in their student body’s health and welfare beyond simple measures (i.e. a school doctor). Schools ignore the bullying, hate and intolerance usually because those being bullied don’t say anything to anyone. Of course, when they do say something, the school may not do anything anyway. Schools tend to prefer status-quo over getting involved. Getting involved can also expose the school to legal issues and they prefer just to stay ignorant for their own legal betterment and financial gain. Also, if the school kicks out any student, that means they’ve lost the revenue from that student. So, there is a negative financial incentive to stepping into bullying situations and remove such students.  Unless the student clearly violate school policies definitively, they really don’t want to do anything.

The bullying persists

Because schools choose not to get involved, bullying persists and nothing gets done. This also leads students into taking matters into their own hands. In the suicide cases, these students felt their only recourse was suicide. Suicide is the flip side of the school massacres. Those prone to suicide are the people who tend to internalize their depression and take their own lives instead of being aggressive and taking the lives of others and then themselves. However, bullying can lead to either outcome depending on the type of person involved. Unfortunately, the other more violent outcome could just have easily have happened.

Whether suicide or a massacre, these issues usually stem from the same source: bullying, hatred and intolerance. With sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, students can now be more cruel and bullying than ever. Now these bullies can not only bully in person, but they can now find all of that person’s friend’s pages and leave hurtful, cruel and damaging comments on the Internet for everyone to see.  Or, in some of the cases, cruel videos of the students in private situations.

In the case of Tyler Clementi, he was apparently not openly gay. Yet, his roommate apparently choose to live stream video of a sexual relation on the Internet and Tweet about it. A camera that he had apparently been hidden before the relations started.

Lucky

Tyler’s roommate is lucky to be alive. If Tyler had been the personality type to explode, it’s possible that dorm or school could have ended up a massacre zone with many students and teachers dead or wounded. Instead, Tyler chose to end his own life by jumping from a bridge alone. Neither outcome is proper or necessary. But, Tyler thought so.

The reality is that schools need to wake up to peer pressure. It’s real and it is not going away. Students need a safe haven where they can go and openly discuss peer pressure situations where they will be taken seriously and investigated free from school penalties and consequences.  Diffusing peer pressure situations is actually important for schools to discuss because the outcome is quite clear should a bullied student take action.

Right now, there is no such place. Students would have to see their own independent psychological counselor to discuss these situations, but these counselors are powerless to do anything to resolve the situation. If schools want to stop the suicides and massacres, they need to set up a safe haven that has the power to stop peer pressure, bullying and other such stupid student tactics dead in its tracks. It’s really the only way. Unfortunately, such a program will cost real money to set up and universities won’t do this because they will lose some of their precious profits to manage such a program.  Public schools can’t do this with the severe funding shortages they are now incurring.  It’s a program whose time has come, but unfortunately, it’s going to take legislation to force schools into compliance.