Peer Groups and Bullying Incidents

On April 9th 1999, Eric Klebold and Dylan Harris entered Columbine High School and after shooting 11 people inside the school, the two boys shot themselves. March 5th 2001, Charles “Andy” Williams began shooting inside Santana High School in Santee, California killing 2 students and injuring 13 others. In another incident four students and one teacher were killed as well as 10 other people wounded outside a middle school in Arkansas while student shooters fired shots from the nearby woods during a false fire alarm. In recent news Tyler Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge in New York after another student secretly showed streaming video of a sexual encounter between Tyler and another boy, and Megan Meir hung herself after a group of neighborhood kids created a fake face book profile to taunt her . While there are multiple theories for the actions in these incidents one of the common underlying themes in all these incidents is bullying.

The term bullying can conjure up a variety of definitions. Bullying is an aggressive behavior that is intentional also involves an imbalance of power (stopbullyingnow.com). This behavior can manifest in different environments and through different media such as cyber bullying which often involves computers or text messaging. Physical Bullying is a way to intimidate or harm another person using physical force such as hitting, kicking, etc. Indirect bullying is a more common form of bullying used by females. Students who are bullied indirectly may experience gossip, social alienation, and loss of social status among peers (Feinberg,2003)

Schools around the nation are seeing an increase in bullying incidents from both male and female students. Most studies find that bo...

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