BULLYING

I believe that bullying at DHS is not a problem. There are many people who get bullied but not to an extent where suicide is the only escape. The school deans have been on top of harassment and bullying. There is very little tolerance for it at our school. However, that does not mean that it does not exist at our school. For example, I have seen teachers make subtle remarks making fun of kids. I wont mention any names but the kid was clearly trying to get attention and unfortunately when people try to get attention they most likely get negative attention. The entire class was telling him to stop talking and then the teacher made a joke about him. To be honest I feel like that was not a problem because when a kid puts himself out there and talks a lot then he has to be able to take criticism. This situation is okay to me because I see little to no harm being done emotionally. Where as the cases that you need to worry about are the ones where kids bully a student that does not put himself out there. If a student that is gay or to fat or too tall is just walking down the hall minding their own business then other students have absolutely no right to make rude comments to them even if they claim that they are friendly with the student. I have only seen this occur a few times this year. There was a lot more bullying last year with the senior class. There were two groups that did not get along and they showed it in the halls. In that case I believe that the best way to combat the bullying would be to have a "Challenge Day." We saw how effective the challenge day was in the movie and I believe that if they could make that a annual assembly that it would help. However, I am not saying that DHS needs it because of the way the faculty punishes bullying. There are very few students that will bully in school because of the possibility of suspension. This is much different than other schools where I hear stories of kids severely picking on students because they are Jewish or gay or even overweight. In Deerfield I believe that we live in a bubble. It is so different from the outside world that I believe that a little bullying is healthy. If no one was bullied than kids would be shocked and not ready for it in the world outside of high school. There is no doubt that bullying will exist outside of high school so adapting to a little criticism is healthy.