How would you feel if you send someone home from school one day wishing that today was their last day? How would you feel if that person didn’t show up at school anymore? Would you have done something different, would you regret your actions? No one should be proud about bullying someone and they should regret their actions. Bullying has become a huge problem in school today because believe it or not, kids go home every day wanting to kill themselves. One in six high school students have considered suicide, and 1 in 12 have attempted it. We need to stand up against bullying and to be the ones that truly make a change in the world.

Over 3.2 million students are victims of bullying each year. Unfortunately, one of those students was Jaheem Herrera. Jaheem lived in Atlanta, Georgia with his mom and younger sister. He was 11-years-old and in the 5th grade at Dunaire Elementary School in DeKalb County, Georgia. Jaheem was constantly called gay, ugly, and “the virgin” because he was from the Virgin Islands. He would come home complaining about the kids at school, so his mom talked to the school board, but they didn’t help much. On April 16th apparently things at school got worse. He came home, went to his room with a smile on his face, and later his younger sister and mom found him hanging from a belt in his closet. One in four teachers see nothing wrong with bullying and will only intervene 4% of the time. If the school did more to help, and if he wasn’t bullied then this would not have happened to poor Jaheem. We are constantly losing kids every day due to bullying. How would you feel if your best friend committed suicide because of bullying? You would probably be depressed and mad at the bullies, so stand against bullying, so we don’t lose kids like Jaheem Herrera.
Approximately 160,000 teens skip school every day due to bullying. Lady Gaga runs the Born This Way Foundation which is against bullying and against kids skipping school because of it. Lady Gaga runs the foundation with her mom Cynthia Germanotta. It was founded in 2011 with Lady Gaga’s hit song “Born This Way,” telling kids to express who they are because they are who they are. The foundation is based off of 3 pillars: safety (creates safe environments with a useful place for individuality), skills (encourages self expression and uses kids tools and skills to lead), and opportunity (find solutions and gives working opportunities to end bullying). The foundation gets the youth involved to create a kinder, braver and safer world.

Seventy-one percent of students report incidents of bullying as a problem at their school. Bullies don’t usually harass students just because they want to, there is often a reason behind it. One reason is that where the bullying takes place is not a place that has high standards for how people treat each other. So in other words, they are not as likely to get caught bullying. Another reason is that bad behaviors get more social recognition rather than good behaviors. So if they are mean, more people would notice whereas doing something good doesn’t really make anyone turn their heads. TV sometimes teaches that being mean to others or picking on others is funny, so the bullies do it trying to be funny or to get social recognition. Probably the biggest reason is that the family the bully comes from is not loving or close. The parents may not be close to their children or care what they do, causing the kids to not have much control or care what they say and do. Another reason is that kids who experience social rejection, the bully, may pass it on to others. The bully got social rejection so he felt like he should do the same to others. Bullies should not feel the need to intimidate someone and no one should be intimidated.

In order to stop bullying we need to stand up against it and not put it off like it is no big deal. To help stop bullying you could join the Born This Way foundation on their website. You could even do a presentation at your school to make classmates more aware of bullying and to help them understand it is a problem, too. Making kids more aware of the effects of bullying would make them not want to do it because then they would feel bad too. One thing my classmates and I are doing is educating the 7th graders about exclusion, which is bullying. We are hoping after they learn about exclusion, they will include more, so our school can be a better place. Bullying has become a huge problem in schools today, and no one should feel like they need to kill themselves to get rid of all the problems. One out of ten students drop out of school due to repeated bullying. We are losing our young and strong minds because of bullying. We need to stand up against bullying to make the world a better place.
Making the world a better place is a huge thing to do, and it can start with you. Stand with me to make school, communities, and eventually the world, a better and safer place for everyone because we were all born this way. Don’t be a bystander, do something!