Introduction
For a long time bullying has been associated with children. Majority of the people assume that bullying happens when a smaller kids harasses an older one. While this is true bullying also happens in colleges with even more dire consequences than the one experienced in the case of little ones. College bullying is slightly different from kids bullying. Its effects range from physical to psychological in which case it can be devastating. It includes hazing, intimidation, assault, cyber bullying among others. It makes no sense at all to abhor bullying and harassment in our colleges if we do not put into place effective and rigid policies to stop this behavior. It will simply be an effort in futility. This paper will look at the pro and cons of putting up laws to deter bullying in colleges.
Arguments for Prohibiting
Young Tyler Clementi took his life after his roommate and a classmate spied on him having sexual encounter with his gay friend. This was enabled by the use of a web camera. This served as a wakeup call for the legislators to come up will laws to stop this form of bullying. To help stop this Rush Holt and Senator Frank Lautenberg introduced a bill in senate called the Tyler Clementi Higher Education Anti-Harassment Act. This bill would require all federal colleges to have clear guidelines for stopping all kinds of bullying. This would help as the colleges would be able to establish the extent of this problem thereby acknowledging it as a real problem (Rush Holt 2010).
This though would not eliminate the problem completely from colleges nonetheless, it is expected that colleges will be restored as a place of higher learning (Rush Holt 2010). In the word of Tyler Clementi parents schools should be restored as places of “compassion, empathy and human dignity”.
Arguments against Prohibiting
Billitteri argues that defining the word harassment in schools has been tried for many years but all it has achieved is to curtail the freedom of speech. He further argues that the Tyler Clementi incident was not an isolated case of harassment but a criminal case. This he says has already been covered in the national laws and there is no need to replicate this to colleges (2010).
In 1980s, there were widespread efforts to amend the constitution to limit offensive speech in campuses. This however did not happen as the government lost these highly expensive cases a record 16 times. Today 71% of the colleges still have these guidelines, which is against the law. Efforts are being made and soon this number might go down. This will help in protecting free speech in colleges (Billitter 2010).
Conclusion
Researchers have found out that bullied students are more likely to commit suicide that those who have not been bullied. It is a sad and shameful act when young students like Tyler Clementi and others commit suicide for a problem that can be resolved. More laws should be passed to make sure that this behavior is curtailed. Although it is very difficult to eliminate bullying from our colleges, it is important to make sure that this vice is controlled. Schools and colleges should be place of learning and not places of where student wear and tear each other. In general students should learn how tolerate diverse cultures.
Work Cited
Billitteri, T. J. Preventing bullying. CQ Researcher, 20, 1013-1036. Retrieved from http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher, 2010.
Rush Holt. Preventing bullying. CQ Researcher, 20, 1013-1036. Retrieved from http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher, 2010.
