Phoebe walked into her house and hung herself in a stairwell.Wow. Just. Wow.
The nastiness didn't even end there. Her tormentors posted vicious comments on the dead girl's Facebook memorial page.
In the Prince case, two boys and four girls, ages 16 to 18, face a different mix of felony charges that include statutory rape, violation of civil rights with bodily injury, harassment, stalking and disturbing a school assembly.Oh GOD! DISTURBING A SCHOOL ASSEMBLY!?!!!
I think most kids would argue that sites like Facebook and Twitter are so inextricably bound up to high school socialization now that it would be social death (a fate worse than bullying?) to completely disconnect.Facebook and Twitter both have block features. Also, Twitter is a middle age phenomenon. Kids don't use it. because it's stupid.
Doesn't sound like age difference matters in Mass. They have accelerator clauses where your punishment gets worse if the age difference is +5 or +10, but I don't see anything that says anything about -5 or -3.I'm not talking about whatever the law says, I'm just talking about common sense. How could something be morally wrong in one state, but not another? Obviously, it could not. If this guy was involved in the bullying, then fuck him. But in general, I don't think kids should be charged with statutory rape just because a prosecutor gets a bug up his ass and decides he wants to throw the book at some kid.
And what, are you blaming her for not blocking everyone on Facebook who said something mean to her?Even if she blocked it, everyone else could read it. They were following her around and throwing things at her and calling her a slut and a whore. How would you like it if people at work were constantly yelling at you that you were a whore and emailing all your co-workers about what a slut you were?
Also, it's worth noting that in my my experience, bullies are not 'the popular kids,' in the true sense of the term. In my high school there were some kids who were truly popular-well-liked by everybody from the elite to the geeks to the stoners to the kids in special ed.In American high schools, I don't think that "popular" really means "well-liked by everybody". It's the name for a clique and a type of kid, not a reflection of how much people like any individual. Many people hated and feared the "popular kids" at my junior high, but they were still popular because they had a certain kind of social power. At my high school, there was considerable overlap between the "popular kids" and the kids who were liked by everybody, and that made things a lot easier for a freak like me.
I really can't believe that several commenters have taken issue with the statutory rape charge. Obviously you have no idea about the difference between a freshman and a senior in high school.Because obviously we. never went to highschool or have known anyone in that age range. The year before I started HS, I did a summer work program with some other kids in that age range. One of my co-workers was a 15 year old girl who had just finished her freshman year and was dating a senior. She didn't seem traumatized. And her dad was actually a judge.
Uh, some kids use Twitter.Right, but it's been less popular with teens then it has been with people, say, in their 30s.
And what, are you blaming her for not blocking everyone on Facebook who said something mean to her?Uh, no? Why would I say that? I was replying to someone who said teens couldn't give up facebook in this day and age. Which is probably mostly true, but they can certainly block people. But she couldn't block people in school which was where the problem was.
Even if she blocked it, everyone else could read it. They were following her around and throwing things at her and calling her a slut and a whore. How would you like it if people at work were constantly yelling at you that you were a whore and emailing all your co-workers about what a slut you were?Well, the school should have done something about the harassment she was getting. But do you really think that gossip should be a crime?
14 year olds don't have fully developed brains. Punishing them as adults is ridiculous and cruel.I don't know if I would go that far. I think kids have a sense of right and wrong, the problem is that human beings don't really ever have fully developed brains. But Children that age are especially stupid, and lack perspective and life experience. And I think it's cruel to end someone's life of stuff that happens at that age. Everyone makes dumbass mistakes. It seems like half the people in this thread want these kids hanged.
(But did that happen? Or did they just do stuff and then other girls started bashing her because of it? Maybe they were jealous or something?)According to the article in Slate, two of the girls who bullied her are the girlfriends of the guys who are charged with statutory rape. It doesn't say whether the accused girls were dating the guys at the time Phoebe Prince slept with the guys, and if so it doesn't say whether she knew they had girlfriends. But it sounds like she had the very bad misfortune to have flings with the boyfriends of the school's meanest mean girls.
But it sounds like she had the very bad misfortune to have flings with the boyfriends of the school's meanest mean girls.Ah, I see.
Another series of MRI studies is shedding light on how teens may process emotions differently than adults. Using functional MRI (fMRI), a team led by Dr. Deborah Yurgelun-Todd at Harvard's McLean Hospital scanned subjects' brain activity while they identified emotions on pictures of faces displayed on a computer screen.5 Young teens, who characteristically perform poorly on the task, activated the amygdala, a brain center that mediates fear and other "gut" reactions, more than the frontal lobe. As teens grow older, their brain activity during this task tends to shift to the frontal lobe, leading to more reasoned perceptions and improved performance. Similarly, the researchers saw a shift in activation from the temporal lobe to the frontal lobe during a language skills task, as teens got older. These functional changes paralleled structural changes in temporal lobe white matter. citeposted by rtha at 9:35 PM on March 30, 2010 [4 favorites]
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Jensen says scientists used to think human brain development was pretty complete by age 10. Or as she puts it, that "a teenage brain is just an adult brain with fewer miles on it."
But it's not. To begin with, she says, a crucial part of the brain — the frontal lobes — are not fully connected. Really.
"It's the part of the brain that says: 'Is this a good idea? What is the consequence of this action?' " Jensen says. "It's not that they don't have a frontal lobe. And they can use it. But they're going to access it more slowly."
That's because the nerve cells that connect teenagers' frontal lobes with the rest of their brains are sluggish. Teenagers don't have as much of the fatty coating called myelin, or "white matter," that adults have in this area.
Think of it as insulation on an electrical wire. Nerves need myelin for nerve signals to flow freely. Spotty or thin myelin leads to inefficient communication between one part of the brain and another. cite
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A. In the last five years, as neuroscience has moved forward with functional magnetic resonance imaging and with research on animals, there have been dozens of new studies of adolescent brain development. These show that the brain systems providing for impulse control are still maturing during adolescence. Neuroscientists have shown that the part of the brain that improves most during adolescence is the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in complicated decision-making, thinking ahead, planning, comparing risks and rewards. And the neuroscientific research is showing that over the course of adolescence and into the 20s, there is this continued maturation of this part of the brain. So now, we have brain evidence that supports behavioral studies. cite
"Enraged that staff members at South Hadley High School knew that Phoebe Prince was the target of harassment before her death, residents and officials yesterday called on top administrators to resign."posted by ericb at 9:28 AM on March 31, 2010
All of which is terrible; and all of which makes me think we're about to try to throw kids in jail --horrible kids, true-- for acting like almost every group of kids to have ever existed anytime anywhere.Is that true? I only ask because I have friends from other countries who find the whole American high school clique thing really weird and were shocked that I said that movies like Mean Girls were not entirely divorced from reality. My sense is that it's not actually true that teenagers everywhere behave like this.
just pointing out bullying doesn't only exist in school and is commonplace in all aspects of society.Maybe, but when grown-ups do to their co-workers what Phoebe Prince's schoolmates allegedly did to her, we call it sexual harassment and, at least in the U.S., allow the victim to sue the hell out of the perpetrators and the employer. And school, unlike work, is mandatory. I don't see why kids at school should have any less protection from harassment and intimidation than grown-ups at work have.
And they got charged with these things because they were doing something illegal--illegal if you're an adult working for a company and illegal if you're a kid in school.Yes, but the only reason they were charged with anything was that their victim killed herself and further that she was a pretty, photogenic girl with a compelling back-story which made the media take notice. Otherwise, there would probably have been no consequences.
Yeah, I'm not seeing the relevance of the media attention here considering my whole point was that the laws already exist, apply to everyone, and were applied in this case.They were only applied in this case because there was huge international outrage, and therefore the DA scrambled to find anything to charge the bullies with. Some of the charges had nothing to do with the bullying, as with the statutory rape charges. And it's not clear that the charges will stick.
Or the work/school distinction you're making in this context, because I'm pretty sure people drop out of high school all the timePhoebe Prince was fifteen years old when she died, and therefore she was legally required to go to school. Your solution to her problem is that she should have broken the law? You do realize, right, that she and her parents could have been arrested for that? Or that a good resolution would have been for her to miss out on the education to which she was entitled?
and that legal concepts like sexual harassment in the workplace and "hostile environment" were created specifically because most people cannot, in fact, simply quit their jobs.Similarly, most students cannot drop out of public school, because their parents cannot afford private schools or homeschooling and children are legally required to attend school. It's even harder for kids to drop out of school than for adults to quit their jobs. However, schoolchildren do not have similar rights to sue their schools for permitting sexual harassment or a hostile environment, which means that schools have less incentive than workplaces do to prevent harassment.
I agree if what you're saying is that when crimes go unreported, they don't generally have consequences. With bullying, not reporting the crimes is common and problematic.With bullying, if you report it, it's not treated as a crime. It's treated as an interpersonal problem, and often the victim is blamed as much as or more than the perpetrators. To treat it a a crime would be to assume that children are full citizens, with the same rights to dignity and security as anyone else, and our society won't do that. Harassment and violence do not become less criminal or more acceptable because they happen between classmates at school.
What relevance does the legality of dropping out have to this discussion?Because we generally don't ask people to deal with being crime victims by breaking laws that are designed for their own protection?
It happens, you're aware of that, right? 5% of students in the US aged 15-24 dropped out of grades 10-12 in the year 2000 according to the National Centre for Education Statistics.Why is that relevant to the discussion?
You're looking at an example of bullying being treated as a crime, a piece of legislation making bullying a crime, in a post about bullying as a crime, and telling me it's not treated as a crimeYes. In this extraordinary case, in which the DA faced totally unique pressures to prosecute, bullying has been treated as a crime. The DA has had to stretch current laws to the breaking point to do that. That doesn't prove that bullying is usually treated as a crime or even as a serious matter. Only in truly extraordinary cases involving death and massive media attention is bullying treated as a crime. I don't think anyone has been able to find any other instance of bullies in Massachusetts being prosecuted.
I said that sexual harassment laws exist and were created in large part because it's unreasonable and unfair to ask someone to "just quit their job" if they don't like their boss/co-workers harassing them, as YOU stated they could do when you said work is not "mandatory" like school is. That was a point you were making, not me.I was pointing out that school for children is analogous to work for adults. In fact, students are even more stuck than adults are at work. But children do not have the same rights to be safe from harassment than adults do. That's all. I don't think that children are any less deserving of protection from harassment than adults are. At the moment, they get less protection.
What I pointed out was when bullying in school was comprised of sexual harassment and a hostile environment, for example, that students are also enjoy protections from harassment and intimidation much like people would in the workplace.That's not true, though. Students do not enjoy protections at all like people in the workplace do. Workplaces bend over backwards to prevent sexual harassment, not because they really care, but because they worry about being sued. Before they faced the threat of lawsuits, sexual harassment was as endemic in American workplaces as bullying is in American schools. The reason that schools tolerate it is that there are no consequences for them for tolerating it.
When it's violence or something criminal, they are also protected by law.No they aren't. Victims of bullies are almost never able to use the law to remedy their situation. The law didn't "protect" Phoebe Prince until after she was dead, and nobody can find another instance of a bully in Massachusetts being prosecuted.
We agree that a problem exists in that a lot of the time it's not reported.We don't agree about that. That's your victim-blaming hang-up, not mine. Reporting it often doesn't help. By all accounts, Phoebe Prince reported it, and the school's response was to offer her counseling. The source of the problem was seen as her feelings, not the bullies' behavior.
I don't find that unreasonable.That's not terribly surprising, given that you've made it very clear throughout this discussion that you don't think bullying is a problem.
And whether the district shelling out a fat stack o' cash to a victim of bullying will solve any bully problems is anyone's guess.Maybe that's true, but it's the remedy that is available to adults, and it's not available to school children. And since there is no alternative remedy for school children, that means that children in school have less protection than grown-ups do. I think that's a problem and that it partially explains why harassment is so much more common in schools than in most workplaces. It's very clear that you disagree, which is your right. But I'd like to think that the tide is turning against people like you.
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posted by dunkadunc at 2:15 PM on March 30, 2010 [25 favorites]