‘Give me your lunch money,’ is a classic bullying scenario. This is not something you usually endure in high school, but is more often encountered at an elementary school level. Though you do not hear these exact words, there are all types of bullying going on at Chamblee Charter High School.
“Sometimes people do not realize when they are bullying someone and that some people take offense to it,” said senior Leyla Alexander-Genculu. “You can not take bullies too seriously because they only tear people down in order to make themselves feel better.”
Many different things can constitute bullying. Telling someone to give you a dollar with no intentions to pay them back is bullying, but not something we often notice. In high school, students frequently try to hurt each other verbally.
“Bullies are people who enjoy hurting other people simply because they are different,” said SAT prep teacher, Martha Macon-Gee.
Macon-Gee has been teaching at Chamblee for about seven years and has seen many classes go through their four years of high school as a unit. She has certain reservations about one class in particular.
“The junior class is one that is very harsh on one another,” said Macon-Gee. “They have been together for a really long time, so it is particularly hard for them to let people into their grade, meaning accepting other students.”
Recently an 11-year-old boy, Jaheem Herrera, was found dead from apparent suicide by hanging himself on April 21st. His parents, in later interviews, said Herrera was constantly bullied by many of his classmates. Bullying was held liable for his want to commit suicide. On Friday, May 1st all teachers in DeKalb County were asked to speak to their students about how their words and actions can hurt each other. This was in response to the death of Herrera, which was not the first of this kind of incident. Some teachers had an intricate and very deep discussion about the difference between the two types of bullying.
“Bullying can be almost anything in which the person’s goal is to get his or her way,” said Steve Rubino, AP Government and AP U.S. History teacher.
In AP U.S. History teacher Bryan Ely’s class discussed what they constituted as bullying, bringing up words like ‘drowning’ and ‘roasting.’ This type of bullying is something that is more common in high school instead in the classic lunch money scenario.
Other teachers did not address the bullying issue at all. One teacher, whose identity we will keep anonymous, simply said “Words Hurt” and continued on with the lesson as normal. This could be considered a smart decision, due to the apathetic attitude towards the issue in high school students.
“I think bullying will always be a problem, but addressing it, especially to a group of high school students, will not fix it,” said Genculu. “Some bullies will always be bullies.”