A teenage girl named Hope Witsell died after being tormented for sending a nude photo of herself to a boy. [more inside]
posted by Ouisch on Dec 4, 2009 - 160 comments

Slate gives you effective strategies for taking on bullies. It's a good article. More interesting, though, is the sidebar, aimed at an altogether different kind of bully. [more inside]
posted by Cool Papa Bell on Aug 11, 2009 - 124 comments

Children Full of Life - grade 4 students in Kanazawa, Japan learn deep life lessons from their incredible teacher and from each other. I strongly recommend this as awesome, but one caveat: keep tissues handy. (5 parts, 40 minutes total, English)
posted by madamjujujive on Jul 25, 2009 - 48 comments

Four Dead in High School Massacre "Mentor high school officials confirmed that a girl and two other boys" in addition to Eric Mohat, died. "'We don't believe it's a problem,'" Justin Maynor, communications director for the Mentor Public School District, told ABCNews.com. [more inside]
posted by orthogonality on Apr 3, 2009 - 139 comments

Sometimes, especially in winter, Kenneth Westhues can hear a flock of crows tormenting a great horned owl outside his study in Waterloo, Ontario. It is a fitting soundtrack for his work. Mr. Westhues has made a career out of the study of mobbing. Since the late 1990s, he has written or edited five volumes on the topic. However, the mobbers that most captivate him are not sparrows, fieldfares, or jackdaws. They are modern-day college professors. [more inside]
posted by parudox on Nov 11, 2008 - 58 comments

Lori Drew was charged today for her involvement in the MySpace-related suicide of Megan Meier last fall.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow on May 15, 2008 - 132 comments

School bully arrested for spiking allergic classmate's lunchbox with peanut butter cookie crumbs
posted by ericbop on Apr 24, 2008 - 127 comments

Every One That Hates Billy....” It featured a photograph of Billy’s face superimposed over a likeness of Peter Pan, and provided this description of its purpose: “There is no reason anyone should like billy he’s a little bitch. And a homosexual that NO ONE LIKES.”

Billy, busy building a miniature house, didn’t see it coming: the boy hit him so hard in the left cheek that he briefly lost consciousness. [His mother] remembers the family dentist sewing up the inside of Billy’s cheek, and a school official refusing to call the police, saying it looked like Billy got what he deserved.

[more inside]
posted by orthogonality on Mar 23, 2008 - 267 comments

Defense of Bill Cosby [...]My crimes that afternoon were two. I committed the transgression of wearing a tweed jacket, black sweater, black slacks and glasses, a no-no for the “ thug barbers" there because to be an appropriate African American by their standards was to wear saggy pants, sport jerseys and doo-rag caps. My second transgression was to bring a book, James Baldwin’s Notes of A Native Son.
posted by Postroad on Jan 19, 2006 - 88 comments

The Department of Education is introducing into all of its elementary and middle schools “Operation Respect: Don’t Laugh at Me,” an intensive curriculum in character development . Operation Respect home page and the "centerpiece" song page (Autoplay Music Warning!) Related dontlaugh.org.
posted by spock on Jun 27, 2005 - 90 comments

Who Pagan Bullies Are and What Makes Them Tick "Bullying is a compulsive need to displace aggression and is achieved by the expression of inadequacy (social, personal, interpersonal, behavioural, professional) by projection of that inadequacy onto others through control and subjugation (criticism, exclusion, isolation etc)."
posted by nickyskye on Jun 22, 2005 - 29 comments

Only Wayne. A racist bullying case study in wiki format.
posted by plep on Apr 2, 2005 - 22 comments

Maggie's Cancer Caring Centres provide beautiful surroundings in which cancer patients and their families can learn to adjust to living with the disease. You'd think an organisation called Christian Voice would support them, but the group instead chose to bully the charity into turning down the proceeds from a gala performance of Jerry Springer, The Opera (which they believe to be a deeply offensive work), pretending to be helping them avoid a scandal, while threatening them with protests outside their centres around the UK.
posted by jack_mo on Feb 23, 2005 - 17 comments

Bully OnLine: 'the world's largest resource on workplace bullying and related issues'.

Includes profiles ("Look, dad, it's a sociopath"). Describes why it's hard to stand up to bullying behaviour, how to do it, and why others won't help you.

There's also kickbully.com [previously discussed here], which offers basic ground-rules for dealing with bullies, and suggestions for dealing with specific situations (including one-liners you might want to try). But watch out, because the bastards are vengeful.
posted by iffley on Oct 13, 2004 - 5 comments

On top of being a teenager, on top of surviving cancer, on top of losing a leg to that cancer, 13-year-old Lacey Henderson, formerly of East Denver's Hill Middle School, had to suffer death threats and epithets because of her condition. This is just sick.
posted by donkeyschlong on Feb 9, 2003 - 55 comments

A million Japanese boys, hiding in their rooms. I didn't know about this - but then again, by definition, maybe I wouldn't. Domestic hermits aside, I frequently see behavior I'd identify as "borderline mentally ill" slide right under people's radar here in Tokyo, and I'm certain a nihonjin might think the same thing after a year in my hometowns, New York and San Francisco. What culturally-specific form does neurosis take in your neck of the woods?
posted by adamgreenfield on Oct 20, 2002 - 51 comments

As if verbal and physical threats in the schoolyard aren't enough. Give a bully a mobile phone and voila, another way of torturing another kid. But which is worse? Being picked on to your face or being bombarded with nasty text messages? It seems that kids have a pretty rough go of it nowadays. It makes me glad I'm almost a grown up.
posted by quietfish on Sep 4, 2002 - 33 comments

Jumping on the infamous Interschool Ho voting booth story Salon is currently running a 4 page article charting/attacking the rise of 'cyber-bullying', a phenomena defined by students (mostly?) slandered their peers online. In the opening page of the piece the author, all orifices throthing, offers several graphic examples of the trend and gives not only details of the full name and school of a female sophomore victim, an extensive barrage of quotes of what ugly, retarded, hurtful stuff was written about her by some severely mentally unstable individual, but also a relatively prominent, in-your-face link to the smalltime message board in question causing them to replace it with the whimpering redirect message 'Unfortunately, due to an article posted on salon.com, the LHStudents.com website traffic has exceeded maximum capacity and we have no other option but to create a new LHBoard on a different server'..
posted by Kino on Jul 9, 2001 - 16 comments

Anti-bullying vote blocked by Christian Conservatives The Washington State bill would have required school districts to set up policies against harassment, bullying and intimidation. Christian conservatives that blocked the vote claim "it amounted to censorship of their right to condemn homosexuality." There is no mention of homosexuality in the bill at all. So this leads me to the conclusion that these Christians condone "harassment, bullying and intimidation." How far from the Golden Rule can you stray and keep a straight face?
posted by kokogiak on May 1, 2001 - 26 comments

Boy, 13, sues teacher after receiving "Fag" candy heart The lawsuit says the teacher rubbed an inoffensive valentine message off the candy heart and wrote "Fag" on it before giving it to the boy in front of his fellow students. Donald E. Miller, a veteran teacher, also had a habit of pretending that a television remote control was a "fagometer" that he pointed at students. He's being probed by the school.
posted by Brilliantcrank on Mar 15, 2001 - 22 comments

I want to bring up a concept for debate here that's been gnawing at me for a while, one that most people probably haven't ever thought much about (though I'd be delighted to discover I am wrong about that). It's taken me a few paragraphs to explain, so I don't think I should just publish the whole thing to the front page. Thus, I ask if you all wouldn't mind please jumping inside this thread for a second and checking it out. If you really hate it, you can back out and move on to something else.

The question I wish to ask, boiled down to one sentence, is this: Should we, as members of a caring, progressive society, have an obligation to be an inclusive society? To see to it that all people are made to feel to be a part of things? A detailed explanation of what I'm getting at is inside. (Yes, yes, I know I've said that I hate the word "progressive" used in any political/sociological sense, but in this case it seems the most appropriate term.)
posted by aaron on Mar 13, 2001 - 77 comments

Good breakdown of complex free speech case in Canada involving student's threat speech, famous writers (e.g. King, Atwood). (from wood s lot)
posted by aflakete on Feb 3, 2001 - 5 comments

Divas Defeat Goliath! The Digital Divas have been successful in their effort to get Microsoft to cease and desist use of the Digital Diva name.
posted by netbros on Oct 2, 2000 - 4 comments