Go Big Red

I went to the EC opportunity last night in the Vilas building. It was a lecture like style presentation from many different students about a range of different topics.I will give you some details to the lecture that I found most interesting. 


One of the topics that I found most influential and interesting was the presentation on bullying. This student began his presentation with a very emotional story about a college kid that took his own life because of bullying. Beginning his speech like this worked as a very powerful attention grabber, as well as related the problem to his audience, mostly college kids. The presentations main point highlighted the fact that our current anti-bullying programs have very little effectiveness. Our school system has taken up a zero tolerance policy when dealing with bullying, and though this is a good idea in theory, the speaker argued that this overly harsh punishment creates repeat offenders. Instead of punishing and isolating these bullys from society, the speaker found it more effective to attempt to rehabilitate the bullys. In many cases, bullys have a deeper issue that instigates their aggressive behavior. Whether it be trouble at home or trying to cover up their insecurities, bullys often have a contributing factor in their attempt to degrade others. Instead of isolating the bullys from society, the rehabilitation efforts would be more effective if there was an attempt to reintegrate the bully into society. 


I thought this speaker took an interesting angle at the problem. He had very little sympathy for the victims of bullying. He addressed this lack of sympathy saying that the problem needs to be addressed at its core. In order for bullying to be stopped, schools need to reevaluate the ways they deal with punishing bully's. Overall I thought this presentation offered an original approach to a problem that is very prevalent throughout society.