trying to create a bill making bullying illegal

Post Reply New Topic

After reading about the latest bullying related suicide, I decided that we need to do something,
With all the press bullying is getting now, we need to strike while iron is hot.

So I emailed Alex about creating a petition and him representing WP and the autistic community to talk to congress about creating a bill to be passed that makes bullying illegal

We have a window of oppertunity here while the press is on the issue...lets not get bogged down in hopelessness, nothing stays the same...everything is always changing.

So what I am asking you all to do is email Alex...his email is at the top under "contact me" Telling him that you want him and others to go to congress representing the autistic community to get a bill passed making bullying illegal
We also want teachers that see bullying and do nothing to be held accountable as well.

Please support me on this.


Jojo

Your heart is in the right place, but you are naive. All the bills in the world won't stop someone from bullying, if they want to do it. There are already laws against harassment, which is just another way of saying bullying, but that doesn't stop people from doing it. All it does is punish them after the fact. Usually the punishment is not that severe, because society expects people to be able to stand a certain amount of being picked on.

I wish there were some effective method of ending such rotten behavior. I had to put up with a tremendous amount of it from all sides (family, school, outside of school, at work, etc.) as a child, teen, and young adult, because I was not able to handle being picked on, and because my Aspergers made me a target of being picked on. It has gotten a lot less now that I am much older, but I will never get over the hurt it caused. I have no really happy memories from my younger days, and no friends. I am unwilling to have close associations because I don't trust people to be civil to me beyond simple acquantance. I prefer being a hermit, over being hurt by people. There is no way to really forget that horrible period of my life. The best I can do is to keep my mind occupied with other things, so that I don't dwell on it.

On the plus side, I have learned coping mechanisms over the years, and I do have interests which keep me occupied, so I my chronic depression is under control, and without dangerous meds.

There are no magic cures for bad behavior by bad people. And our permissive society has led to parents abdicating their responsibility to teach their kids civilized behavior, and to punish them when they don't behave. The schools, Hollywood, and the media also encourage bad behavior, and insult good behavior. Loony Liberal judges let criminals off with little or no punishment, even for serious crimes, because we "shouldn't punish the bad person, because they had a bad childhood", or some other bad experience, so we should let them get away with murder. So don't look for an improvement in the situation any time soon.

We just need to do the best we can in our own lives to keep an eye out for trouble, so we can try to avoid it. I also recommend that those in better health than I am, take martial arts courses. Beyond that, just use your coping mechanisms and keep busy with your interests.

And remember, we on the Autism/Asperger spectrum are all--

A Different Drummer

If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
Perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears,
However measured or far away.

--Henry David Thoreau

Passing a law will not change anything. Kids will be kids and bullying is a natural (though unpleasant) process of development.

I do agree however that schools should be mandated to severely punish bullying. Im not talking detention or parent-teacher meetings... im talking about 1st offense: warning, 2nd offense: suspension for a week, 3rd offense: dismissal from school & the parents become responsible for the child's education (home schooling) for 1 year.

Its only when the parents feel the kick that they will do something about it.

I agree with you on most points. I do believe, though that there should be something in between a "warning" and "a week's suspension," perhaps a week of after school detention? And a call should be made, by the principal, not some random secretary or teacher, explaining why the child got the warning, detention, suspension, etc., each time the child is punished so the parents know what is going on.

The other point I would like to make is that sometimes the parents just don't give a darn if their child is picking on another kid. I was bullied brutally from kindergarten through high school graduation, and many times I would be out with my parents, run into a classmate with their parents, and they would go into the same verbal abuse that happened in school, in front of both our parents!! !! !! These parents did nothing, and in one case, said when my parent's backs were to them, congratulated their kid, saying "show that ret*d who is boss!" I hated it but didn't do anything for fear of greater retaliation (I was punished by the principal when I lashed out verbally at one of the worst bullies), and as I had told my parents that it was nothing, they didn't do anything either.

Because those parents, in doing nothing, encouraged the bullying, I how have severe PTSD, no self-worth and a dislike of the human species in general; granted I do have some friends, but all of them have come during my past 2 years college, with the exceptions of only one or two. I wish those parents could see what the bullying did to me. I still hate the people who tortured me, and always will. The big shocker is that not a single one of the people who treated me like dirt even remembers doing it, or even remembers me!

IDK. I think it would be great to get a bill passed to outlaw bullying. But how would such a law be enforced? Would bullying even be taken seriously? At what age would it be too young to persecute a bully? 5 years old, 2 years old? How would you punish any bully at any age? Suspension, extra homework, work without pay?

I also think that bullying is so integrated into our society that it is accepted. As horrible as it sounds...it happens in neighborhoods, schools, colleges, work places, even in some homes, etc. How would you word it, how would you make this plausible? It sounds like a logistical nightmare. I hate hearing that someone has ended his/her life due to cruelty of others. It's so wrong on every level. Yet this is something that has been going on since the beginning of history. Just like chickens have a "pecking order," people do too.

I dont think we should be hopeless and just accept the status quo.

However I do amend what I previously thought...I think we should make parrents and teachers accountable for the actions of minor (age-wise) bullies.

Still something needs to happen maybe not putting 5 year olds through the justice system, but teachers turn a blind eye and even punish the ones being bullied and parents create a home enviroment that allows this to happen.

Something needs to be done, how many kids need to take their own lives before this issue is dealt with

The media is highlighting bullying like never before, there is no better time to address this than now.

Jojo

Bullying already is illegal.

When bullies threaten physical violence and have the apparent means to carry out that violence, they commit an assault.
When bullies engage in an unwanted touching, they commit battery.
Even in the case of oral bullying, most states will (I think) have criminal statutes that will already prohibit harassment.

The answer is not yet another, new piece of legislation. The answer is to create an environment in which bullies no long have an incentive to bully, or in which the disincentives outweigh the incentives. This won't be done in the halls of congress, it will be done in the hallways of schools.

Such a bill is not practical. Schools can come down hard on kids who stuff someone in a trash can, but all the psychological stuff can be so subtle that school officials will never be able to catch it.

So we just let this go on...and kids kill themselves to elievate the suffering??
We need to think of solutions, not come up with reasons it will not work.

Lets put our heads together and come up with a solution.

So I hear you all say that legislation will not change anything...then tell me what will.
Visagrant basicly says the problem begins and ends with the schools

What can be done to create an atmospere which bullying is not tollerated or indirrectly encouraged?

We would first have to find out what causes the bullying enviroment to exist?
How do we do that...anyone know or have any information to contribute to this?

I dont want to hear all the ways it cant work, I want to hear solutions.
How many more lives must be ruined by this and how many more kids must take their own life to find relief...this has to end.

I want the autistic comunity to get behind this.

Jojo

I'm not disagreeing that something needs to be done, but I'm not sure legislation is the most practical way to go about it. It's not the most efficient way to do it, but I think that pushing for new local community measures to get adopted would probably work best. It may leave holes but it would be more responsive to local needs without blurring the line between free speech and openly talking about having a problem with someone and violating first amendment rights. For physical bullying the best thing that can be done is enforce the existing school rules without bias.

Yes, why don't we throw laws against everything negative until we have no personal freedoms to even make criticisms any more.

Besides the laws regarding harassment, assault, etc do already cover the more serious incidents.

I'll agree that laws are not the best way to go about it, at least at a state or federal level, but some sort of policies should be worked on to help the local districts and individual schools address those issues in a manner that is not tied up in bureaucracy.

While bullying is a natural part of development, the means through which it is being perpetuated are anything but. Adults may fear the constant threat of identity theft or other digital crimes, but kids can be harassed 24/7 over the internet. I am the last person to suggest a ludite solution, but I do believe some social reform is in order. The internet has been rightly called the greatest ever experiment in anarchy, and now it is playing a role in deaths. My personal suggestion is to not have social network accounts until after grade school, or until HS in my case.

As far as zero-tolerance policies are concerned, I have personally had my bullies use these laws against me in elementary school. They claimed I threatened to kill them all. And what if someone is guilty of such a crime? They are sentenced to a couple days of effective vacation.

All legal measures to date have only served to make adults more paranoid about five-year-olds pointing chicken fingers at each other while real bullying has only gotten worse. Practical (and probably unorthodox) methods need to be implemented.

Additionally, it occurs to me that even non-violent school rule violations have useless or nonsensical punishments. If students are late to class in the morning, they are sent to another part of the school to the attendance office to get a piece of paper, which they then return to their current teacher so they may throw away the paper - a complete waste of time the should be spent by the student trying to catch up with anything they might have missed by being late. I believe that I personally helped to change this policy at my HS. Also, too many late attendances (indicative of sleep deprivation) results in a detention every so often. For several years in MS and HS I had near-constant detentions, which sucked more hours of my time and stunted any possibility of having a friends and a social life.

In short, alt-sexual kids are being persecuted but our damn schools aren't even straight. (straight meaning honest and proper, incase any of you get ideas)

The laws required for such an undertaking would be far worse than the behavior they're trying to prevent.

Any kid who is different is a bully magnet, not just non-straight kids. Often the problem is that the bully knows how to get the bullied into trouble & does, while the bully never gets questioned & gets away with tormenting the bullied.

The whole problem is that teachers & school authority figures rarely ever see the bully in action. If the bullied retalliates, it's the bullied who gets punished. Bullies know how to play the game. In many cases, the bullies are teachers' favorites.

It's like the kid in Australia who got tired of being tormented by the smaller bully & picked him up & slammed him into the ground. The bully pushed this kid until he snapped. I believe the bullied was also suspended from school, right along with the bully. Nothing was accomplished.

you all have a point...legislation is not going to solve anything.

Tomboy4good:
you are right about that...many bullies are rarely seen in action.
So how bout a diffferent approach, creating a climate of acceptance of differences in schools and respect for each other
Also training teachers on the true nature of bullying, and how to spot the signs.
And I am just throwing this out there, dont shoot me, but teachers can look out for those kids who are at high risk of being bullied because of a lack of social network or are different. They can also have meeting with parents of those kids and teach the kids ways to respond to a bully that disfuse the "testing period" often used by bullies. Once bullying is off and running, it is hard to stop short of moving to a different school, but there is a period of time that bullies test their prospective prey...if they dont get the reaction they are looking for,, then they move on.

what do you think about these suggestions??