Speech Jania Stevenson

Someone, somewhere right this second is being bullied. What are you going to do about it? Most people will do nothing, which is the reason why bullying has become such a huge problem in our society today. It seems like every day we hear about yet another bullying incident. Someone committing suicide or killing others all because they were bullied, but how many reports do you see where something is actually being done about bullying? When do you see someone being punished for harassing someone else or hear about someone stepping in and stopping someone from being bullied? Almost never, and I think it’s about time we change that. We all need to try to help stop this bullying issue from getting worse.

Millions of children are bullied each year in America. Over 3.2 to be exact. The documentary Bully tracks the stories of five families dealing with bullying and exposes the true struggle most kids go through every day. One child named Alex was bullied day in and day out, at school and even on the bus ride home, without a single person reporting it. Even Alex himself never told his parents about the severity of what was going on. The only reason Alex finally got help was because the producers were worried about his safety and told his parents. This is what happens all the time around the country. People hear about bullying, or even witness it with the own two eyes and still do nothing about it. About 56% of students have reported seeing some type of bullying occur in their school, but only 20 to 30 percent of those students have actually reported the incidents to an adult. Even when reported, teachers will only intervene about 4% of the time. And when they do intervene, over two thirds of students state that the help is infrequent and ineffective. In the documentary, once Alex’s parents told the principle about the incidents, she said she would “take care of it”, the exact same thing she had told his parents in the fall. Even the adults who have the power to help, don’t do anything to stop this problem.

 It’s not just the responsibility of adults to fix this problem, it’s up to the students as well. It has been reported that if a bystander intervened in bullying, it would stop within 10 seconds 57% of the time. But if we just ignore it, it doesn’t get reported and nothing can be done about. Or something even worse can happen. The person being bullied can take matters into their own hands. For youth between the ages of 10 and 24, suicide is the third leading cause of death. It accounts for about 4,400 deaths per year, according to the CDC. And for every suicide, there are at least 100 suicide attempts. And about half of these suicides among young people are related to bullying. These victims are between 2 to 9 times more likely to consider suicide than non-victims. It’s not just K-12 students who can be pushed to kill themselves because of bullying, older kids can be affected too. An article from Time Magazine reported the death of a college freshman at Rutgers University named Tyler Clementi. He jumped off the George Washington Bridge in New York City because he was being bullied about his sexual orientation. He even posted on Facebook "jumping off gw bridge sorry." and nobody came to save him. Besides suicide, a victim can also seek revenge. About 75% of school shootings have been linked to bulling and harassment.  This can be seen as a factor in shootings such as Columbine and Heath High. If someone had spoken up, even the victims themselves, could these tragedies have been prevented?

Every single state in the United States has policies and/or laws regarding bullying, but they can’t be put to use if nobody speaks up about bullying. So the next time you see or hear about bullying, don’t just sit there and be a bystander, get up and do something. Because it’s up to us, all of us, to help put an end to bullying. Thank you.