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Bullying And Its Impact On Bullying

Decent Essays

In example #2 of the bullying cases in which the female middle school student committed suicide after being harassed by her peers over a “sexting” photo, the school demonstrated significant incompetence in both government anti-bullying protocols as well as legal, moral, and ethical imperatives based on bullying research in the field of school psychology. This is shown by the exclusive focus on the student’s sexting photo and not on the later acts of bullying and their psychological implications in an environment populated by young people at a critical stage of cognitive and social development. Although the federal trial court dismissed the parent’s lawsuit based on “the school not being in a custodial relationship with the student at the time of the suicide,” this ruling represents a superficial understanding of the psychological impact of bullying in a school context and the school’s ethical and moral responsibility to develop a comprehensive plan to create an anti-bullying culture among faculty, students, and parents that extends beyond the school year. In the following, I will discuss in detail the specific areas of incompetence demonstrated by the school and how and why this incompetence weakens its moral, ethical, and legal foundation. By focusing primarily on the inappropriate photo sent by the female student as opposed to the bullying she incurred, the school failed to support the student and address the larger and more serious issue of

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