Full-time bullies should be removed from the schooling environment so that they can get help and psychological assessment. I'm not talking about petty teasing here, which everyone does at some point in school. I'm talking about the extreme cases.
People are not driven to suicide for no reason. It is not easy to come to that conclusion or to commit the act. The amount of suffering must have been overwhelming in order for it to override the will to live and survive. The other thing I'm wondering though is where are the coping resources of these children? Most suicides happen because suffering outweighs resources of support. Were the parents oblivious or unhelpful? Was the school turning a blind eye to pleas for help?
I was bullied pretty bad in grade 8. I'm over it now, but it mostly left a bitter taste in my mouth about the education system. I was bullied openly and in front of teachers. In fact, some teachers even took part. I'd imagine that in cases where bullying drives a person to suicide, you are looking at schools with teachers that are overworked and thus can't have time to care, they don't care or don't know how to adequately deal with it, or they are actively taking part.
Children should not be slipping through the cracks and dying because of bullying in the year 2010. Zero tolerance should mean zero tolerance. Remove the bullies, not the victims.
Is calling someone a slut, throwing food at them, disseminating text pictures of their boobs that they took themselves, or writing on a social networking site that they are a whore really "bullying"?
If the "victim" feels fine about herself and what she's done in the past, what she's doing at present, and what she plans to do in the future, is she truly a "victim" at all?
The people doing it are obviously threatened by the victim and her behavior because they are insecure about their own sexuality. All the so-called "victim" has to do is turn that back around on them. Or merely ignore them, and watch with amused satisfaction as they wallow in their own insecurity.
We need a society which accepts and supports every aspect of young people, including their sexuality, which is an undeniable part of who each and every one of them is.
We had that at one time (late 60s through early 90s).
Now we've somehow regressed back to the 1950s again, at least as far as our collective attitude toward female sexuality is concerned.
When we as a culture return to a more reasonable attitude toward our young women, they will cease hanging themselves in closets.
Until then, nothing is likely to halt such tragedies, which seem to happen every week now, and
inevitably occur because some young woman attempted to utilize her sexuality in some way (whether to attract the attention of a guy she liked, or to bond an existing relationship with one), and other young women (and young men, in some cases) felt threatened by that, and decided to respond to the perceived threat by attacking the young woman in question for daring to be overtly sexual.
All of the people involved in this equation are dysfunctional, because of our current social climate- both the bullies, who perceive a classmate's sexuality as a threat, and the victim herself, who perceives her own sexuality as something so shameful that she ought to end her life, just because her peers tell her that it is.
Let's get back to a healthier attitude, people, seriously.
Does your own child have to die, before you can see how harmful and damaging sexual repressive societies are to females?
And don't even get me started on all the gay male teens who are committing suicide these days because of this exact same dynamic (substitute "fag" for "slut" and the bullying follows the exact same trajectory).
Sexually repressive societies are UNHEALTHY FOR EVERYONE.
