Phoebe Prince Bullying Case

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The word “bully “was first used in the 1500’s to mean sweetheart. Over time it mutated like a gene to mean harasser of others. Today bullying is a form of aggressive behavior manifested by the use of force or coercion to affect others, particularly when the behavior is habitual and involves an imbalance of power. The “imbalance power” may be social power and/or physical power. There are several different types of bullying, which include physical assault, verbal harassment, indirect (rumors, exclusion from social groups), and cyber bullying. Cyber bullying can occur in several different forms, such as texting, picture/video clips, phone calls, email, chat rooms, instant messaging, and websites. Bullying can occur in any context in which people…show more content…
One case in particular that ended tragically is the case of Phoebe Prince, which lead to the prosecution of six teenagers for charges of statutory rape and civil rights violation, as well as to the enactment of stricter anti-bullying legislation, signed into law May 03, 2010, by the Massachusetts state legislature. Phoebe Prince was born in Bedford, United Kingdom, raised in Ireland since she was two years of age, and then in 2009 moved to South Hadley, Massachusetts. Prince was fifteen at the time of her death. She had suffered countless occasions of bullying from these six classmates over relationships with the boyfriends of some of these classmates. On the day of Phoebe Prince’s suicide, three of the accused, including the male football player who earlier had a relationship with Prince, engaged in persistent taunting and harassment of Prince at school, in the library, and auditorium. One of the accused followed Prince home from school in a friend’s car, threw an empty can at her, and yelled an insult. It was right after this final incident that Phoebe Prince hung herself at home. She had endured three long months of torture and abuse at the hands of these classmates. Even after Prince’s death, the classmates continued to slander her on the social networking website…show more content…
Do we act like bullies at our children’s sporting events? Do we act arrogantly towards others when we serve on boards and committees? Do we belong to a union that demands its members to toe the line? Do we support this type of behavior, passively or actively, and then support anti-bullying legislation? Maybe our attitudes need to change more than our laws. Adults, mainly school officials and parents, play a prominent role in the modern bullying cycle. In Bully, there are several groan-inducing scenes of adults failing to step it up and do the right thing. The failure by bureaucracy to make adequate judgment calls or even to muster enough courage to try is, to me, the largest (and really, the only problem) here. An eighteen page checklist is not the answer. Most examples of “standing up” is not institutionally okay anymore. Post Columbine High, schools seem to be terrified of any specter of violence. If a student beats up his tormentors, or even if he loses, he or she is automatically suspended or expelled from school under the zero tolerance policies. If he or she hurts the bully badly enough, he or she can be tried in a juvenile court. Both of these are far more traumatizing experiences than a beat down. Let’s be clear here. This is a societal problem, not something confined to public school administrators: how we apportion blame, what fears and misdeeds we fixate on or ignore, the core values our society truly
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