Sophia R. Wisconsin

Letter to the Next President

Dear Next President, I have been noticing a many problems with bullying in high school and in public. Though it is hard to see, it happens way too much to be acceptable. Over 3.2 million students are bullied each year. Suicide is the number one leading cause of deaths of adolescent studies. That shouldn’t be an issue to have to deal with or think about. I am writing this letter to inform the next president with how bad the situations with bullying are becoming. It is state law, that every school is required to have a rule about bullying in the school handbook. Every day kids report someone being bullied even themselves, but does the situation always get handled? The answer is, no. As a student myself, I have experienced bullying and it sucks. Just walking around the hallways I can hear people insulting or ridiculing others. I have informed the teachers of these acts, the bully(s) apologize to the victim, however it does not change their behavior. It gets even worse now with technology and the internet. The victims cannot get away from it, and are usually scared to tell somebody about it. The punishments just aren't stopping this, and it needs to become more severe. Even a week of jail time would surely stop bullies. There are kids and teens harming themselves and committing suicide everyday, 79% of reasons why these people are killing themselves are because they're being bullied and don't know what to do (https://nobullying.com/bullying-suicide-statistics/.) August 24, 2015 my beautiful best friend committed suicide. Her name is Jerrica Smithback, she was 13 and we would've just have been starting our 8th grade year. Jerrica had a really hard life and was bullied all throughout her school years. She had reported it a number of times, and the school hasn't done anything about it. This happens every single day and something about it needs to done. According to the "Wisconsin State Legislative," there is NO law about the bully being fined, arrested, or punished. Which means, that the bully who just made that girl kill herself, is still out ruining kids lives and making everyone feel absolutely awful. Bullying nowadays have gotten severly out of control and something needs to be done about it. According to the "UK The Telegraph" cyber-bullying is now to most common form of bullying. Cyber-Bullying is when you're harrassing someone over the internet, whether it's laughing on someones picture, posting about them or calling them names, bullying is bullying. The study claims that "It is more common for girls to be bullied and harassed rather than boys are. Also, the most common age is 14-15 year olds." Girls were more likely to face name calling than boys, and to be excluded from friendships, where as boys were more likely to have their money and possessions taken, and to face violence with one another. There are so many reasons why you could be bullied and the reasons are often just to be hateful to someone but there are why to prevent this from happening again but we need help from the schools and parents. To save the next generation(s) from suffering as we did from bullies and the lack of help during our time, we have to enforce the rules and take the responsibilities upon ourselves. Thank you for taking the time for this letter, I hope this can change the laws and change the behavior of some people.

http://www.debate.org/opinions/should-bullying-be-illegal

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6556207/Cyber-bullying-now-the-most-common-form-of-bullying.html

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/118/46