You're a douche ass-hat!

I know he couldn't dodge them on MySpace, but why didn't he just keep messenger names that his peers couldn't know? It seems like cyber-bullying wouldn't be very hard to avoid that way. Still, I feel sorry for the kid. Having to deal with that at school all day is bad enough without coming home to find the same people making your online life hell too.

Originally Posted by Karasu

This archaic form of arrogance and childish-ness needs to end. These schools need to push up the 'Zero Tolerance' rule to almost nuclear-like levels. To let these kids that do bully think that they are BETTER than another kid is appalling. Quite frankly the "kids will be kids" line is old, and if kids are like that then, well it needs to stop at an early age immeadiately, before it becomes a problem.

That's a great thought, but ridiculous in execution. When I was in 8th grade, my last year of middle school, our principal was fired and there was a power grab between the three assistant principals. They took the zero tolerance policy to the extreme. You could turn another student in for making a veiled threat, ie saying "I'm gonna kill you for that" out of frustration, and it was likely they'd get in-school suspension. It didn't even have to be that much. A little teasing that even the teased person didn't care about? Suspension if certain teachers overheard it.

The result wasn't any sort of drop in fighting and bullying, it was just an increase in people suspended. If anything, bullying increased. The phrase "zero tolerance" became a complete joke to both students and any of the teachers that payed attention, and that only caused more problems in high school when the principal saying "We have a zero tolerance for violence or the threat of violence," received nothing but laughter every morning. If anything, it caused more people who were usually compliant to scoff at the administration.

Parents are the real source, and unfortunately there's only so much the government can do about bad parenting. Even if most people raise good kids, they can still learn the bullying behavior from from the others.

Jam it back in, in the dark.