Most Honorable Senator Cardin
509 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC, 20510
Dear Senator Cardin,
I firmly believe that our nation’s schools need to focus on the topic of bullying and what the long lasting effects on the victims are. Although it is heavily stressed that being a bully is never something anyone should strive to be, it has occurred to me that many people are still unaware of just what bullying can do to a person. Being a teenage girl who has suffered from being bullied in many forms, this issue truly resonates with me and approximately three million other students each year.
Bullying is defined as “to use superior strength or influence to intimidate someone, typically to force him or her to do what one wants”, but now, bullying can take on a whole different from. With the increase of technology, adolescences are finding other and much easier ways to attack someone through the Internet or over the phone. This can leave the victim feeling helpless because they no longer feel safe anywhere. I know this first hand because not only have I been cyber bullied numerous times, but as a result, have experienced a multitude of emotions and feelings including, depression, worthlessness, helplessness, and anxiety. Sadly, this is not such a rarity. In resent studies, bullying and depression seem to go hand and hand and can even lead to suicide. Every 30 seconds somebody in the world attempts to take his or her own life, which is a gigantic issue that has been pushed to the back burner. Bullying is an extremely serious issue that nearly 2/3 of students in the United States believe to which schools don’t respond strong enough. We cannot go on like this much longer before there are even more ways to verbally, physically, and mentally attack our loved ones.
Please consider my recommendation for discovering more ways to educate students on the dangers of bullying. Whether or not schools make a mandatory assembly, or create a trimester or semester class about this subject, any increase in support for this cause would benefit the students of our country tremendously.
Most Sincerely,
Claire Todd