I caught a rerun of a network drama show the other night. To prevent spoiling anything, I won’t say which show or give too many details about it, but basically there was a bully at a high school who was shot and killed. It was thought a couple of his most common, most mistreated victims were responsible, but it turned out the guidance counselor did it. Why? Because she wanted to prevent another Columbine, deciding best to just kill the bully rather than have one of his victims snap and shoot up the whole school. She said the bullied students were helpless and had pretty much no one to turn to, that they were being badly abused and no one was doing a thing about it.

Now, getting to my point, all this led me to a lot of youth rights pondering. While I know the “roles” people play in high school are depicted very poorly on TV and other media, there’s some of this I recall from my own middle school and high school days. Bullying and cruelty and such does occur to some degree. So I, like many others, ask myself “Why?”

It’s about right then, the “youth rights side” of my brain gets militant. Why am I asking why? Plenty of adults are bullies as well. You just don’t hear about it as much, that side of my brain says. At the same time, “you don’t hear about it as much”, while often a good point, isn’t a very good leg to stand on. I sure as hell would never say “because teenagers are inherently violent and stupid” like a lot of folks unthinkingly say directly or indirectly. And I don’t think for a second age is a factor in the behaviors themselves. But let’s say just for the sake of argument that this show and others that say similar stuff are about accurate in their portrayal of this stereotypical bullying predator and his/her battered and increasingly insane victims.
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