bullying

this was an essay we had to write for my English class. The topic was to compare the memoir Nightto reports of bullying on high schol campuses.

To me, one of the most compelling characters in Eli Wiesel’s memoir Night is Moshe the Beadle, the town bum who witnesses an atrocity and returns to warn deaf ears. He is treated as a madman and ignored, at the expense of those who he tried to warn. It is little wonder, thinking of the Beadle, that in more recent years, Wiesel has spoken out against policies of “neutrality.” He said in a speech that “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides.Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” This outrage at indifference should be shared by more people.
The Holocaust was not the last time genocide, discrimination, and hatred have shown their faces. In the 1990s, the nation of Rwanda was home to a bloody “ethnic cleansing.” It took the world community weeks to step in on behalf of those who were victimized. Darfur and other African countries have been the sight of vicious turmoil, often without intercession from the Western world.
It is a dangerous think to compare mere “bullying” to the discrimination and crime committed in by various governments. However, there is a point at which bullying crosses a line to something much different. A point at which taunting fades into destructive behavior, and lives are ruined. The alienation and intimidation on high school campuses cannot in anyway compare to that which Eli Wiesel faced in the Holocaust. This does not, however, mean that lives cannot be ruined by school bullies.
On January 8, 1991, Jeremy Wade Delle attended his high school English course at Richardson High School in Texas. Unlike the average day, however, he brought with him a .357 Magnum revolver. In front of his class, Delle placed the gun to his own head and pulled the trigger. His death, and the unfortunate teasing which contributed to it was immortalized in the Pearl Jam song named for him. “Jeremy spoke in class today,” mourned the band’s lead singer Eddie Vedder.
Delle’s story may be a dramatic case of life ruined by teasing, but it is by far not the only one. Every year, sad statistics are reported revealing stories of suicide, self-mutilation, and teenage depression. Many of these cases are related to bullying. I have known some of these “statistics” personally. One girl who faced constant teasing over her weight and ended up heavily involved in drugs and suicidal behavior. Another who often broke down in tears during classes, who I have not seen since the day she moved from Clayton. I do not know what became of her, or if she suffered similar breakdowns in her new environment. One of my brother’s classmates committed suicide the year they would have graduated. Their stories are examples of what happens when “teasing” is taken too far.
Of course, those students who are the most frequent targets of bullying are the ones who are “different.” Jeremy Wade Delle’s crime was simply being "real quiet" as one of his fellow students later described him. Indeed, the school bully is the agent of conformity. Anyone who appears to be easily made into a victim -quiet kid, the homosexual, the “nerd,” the overweight or “unattractive” student- will become a target.
I will not go so far as to compare the school bully to a Nazi guard. However, they both serve the same purpose: the silencing of nonconformity. It does not matter if the victim is the angel faced boy Wiesel once saw hanged or a “quite kid” who can no longer bear the treatment of his peers, the result is the same.