Dickson Chen

Delegate ID: 0010199193

January 25, 2014
WSWS Local Civic Engagement Inquiry Assignment
I decided to analyze the article called Here a word, there a word written on January 7,
2014 on the Seattle Revolution website. This article focuses on the bullying aspect of Emily
Bazelons essay in the New York Times. Elizabeth Campbell claims that bullying is now
considered equal and used so often that the social penalties for exhibiting such behavior is not
enforced enough today. Campbell later inquires that there is a lack of awareness of bullying and
people allow bullies/offenders to get away from such an innocuous practice. The word bullying
has negative connotations because the word is front loaded with values and goals that are usually
broken when such a feat like bullying occurs. Nowadays, bullies rectification or justifications
for committing these invocative behaviors are not relevant and necessary to be understood by
everyone else; for if there is bulling these days, it is automatically matched with a penalty. Often,
people will focus on the bully itself and not the bullied victim. Nowadays, media has caused the
greater than normal importance to anything. Part of the hype of bullying is the fact that if
someone does bully you, they are inherently destroying your self-image which no one has a right
to distort or damage. Going into the minds of the bullies, a justification for why bullies bully is
because they believe that they are autonomous beings that exist on a plane above all others and
they believe that they have the power to speak their mind which doesnt mean they are right.
That is why they commit additional feats like violence (a form of bullying) to attempt to enhance
their opinions.
People in the community, especially in school communities where bullying is most
prevalent, are aware of bullying and are putting desperate measures to stop bullying and blatantly
trying hard to prevent any form of bullying from even happening. Teachers, especially those in
elementary and middle school, have been enforcing strict anti-bullying measures to prevent
bullying from happening. Previously, these schools have reported incidents in which students
enter stages of depression and suicidal thoughts. These remarks are usually brought up to
persuade students to be for anti-bullying. In addition to this, students are usually shown live
demonstrations or pre-recorded videos of bullying and how bullying will affect the victim of
bullying. All these efforts have been implemented in hopes of putting a stop to bullying.
Personally, I think that these efforts to prevent bullying are effective in the sense that it indeed
does stop bullying, but will not have a long term effect. The reason why I say this is because the
efforts are short termed persuasions; for after a while, the students will forget it since they are
informed about bullying but the fact that bullying is not entirely enforced is the issue.
In order to prevent this, I request that there be an anti-bullying coalition or organization
to be established at schools. Then, throughout the school year, the coalition will call district
events and conventions in which the issue of bullying will be talked about. This can be a
prestigious and seemingly fun coalition to join. Through moral support from additional
organizations, this coalition can be strong and an interesting coalition to join. This way, the
students are engaged in an organization that will benefit them in the future and really shape the
way that bullying is dealt with. The goal of the coalition could be to spread the word about
ending bullying so that the students of this coalition can be spread to other people in their
communities. An interesting thing about this is that these conventions can be fun and can spread
positivity and encompass the idea of anti-bullying.