Legal Definition Of Bullying In The United States

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Due to all the violent tragedies, depression, truancies and suicides that happened over the years, the government and school systems have decided to come up with strategies to reduce and prevent bullying. After seeing the rates of these occurrences, “Georgia became the first state to pass bullying legislation requiring schools to implement character education programs to address bullying prevention” (Associated Press, 2009) (Bell, et.al, 2012, pg. 33). “The Department organized the components into eleven categories” (Bell, et. al, 2012, pg. 23). The eleven categories are: “Prohibition and Purpose Statement (outline of the detrimental effects bullying has on students, declares if any behavior is unacceptable, and that it needs to be taken seriously), …show more content…
Every reported situation must be investigated before the student hears a response, which can happen anywhere from an hour to a few days depending on how serious the final act is (Karen, personal communication, December 9, 2015). According to Karen from Michigan City, “the biggest issue with reported bullying is that first it needs to be determined if the student has actually experienced the legal definition of bullying” (Karen, personal communication, December 9, 2015). Many students who report bullying do not understand the correct definition of bullying. The students believe bullying is other students making fun of them, and that can be a one-time thing. For example, a girl reports that this guy in her class told her that her dress is ugly. Karen is legally responsible for three factors which are: “someone is mean to a person on purpose, someone is mean to a person more than once, and there is an imbalanced power (physical, emotional, verbal, and social)” (Karen, personal communication, December 9, …show more content…
If it occurs again, it will result in disciplinary actions (Karen, personal communication, December 9, 2015). According to Karen, “I am no legal expert, but what I think the federal government did was to pass down the issue of bullying laws to each individual state to determine and govern. Which makes sense, because there are no federal schools, only schools accredited by their states. Therefore, if there is a case of bullying that was not handled appropriately, the plaintiff would then take this to the local or state judicial process. If they are not satisfied with that, then it would go to the federal level of appeals (eventually). Again, I am not a legal expert, but what I know about how the law works as I have seen it happen, with different issues. Each state may have their own court of appeals that it may need to go thru first before it is brought to the federal level, but the goal is to settle a dispute prior to it going to the federal level when at all possible” (Karen, personal communication, December 9, 2015). Karen does a lot of teaching to the students to help them understand what bullying really is, and other situations that students may feel is bullying, but in reality it may just be someone having a bad day and lashing out on

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