Bullying on College Campus

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Bullying on College Campus
Bullying on college campuses has become rampant in the recent past, and contrary to what many believe, it is a real issue that has attracted the attention of college administrators. Bullying is defined as “unwanted, aggressive behavior among school-age children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance (stopbullying.gov).” Even this definition limits bullying to school-aged children, even though it happens even to adults at the workplace. Bullying takes many forms which include verbal, physical, cyber, and relational (Suski, 701). There are laws, both at state and federal levels that serve to protect citizens against bullying. Yet, bullying has become widespread, more so due to easy access to the internet.
A few weeks ago, a student posted sexually explicit pictures and videos of an ex-girlfriend on the internet. Before posting the sexually explicit content, the student had been sending the girl some very crude messages and also slut-shamed her whenever they met. Besides, the student was spreading defamatory rumors about the girl and threatened to post more videos and photos on the internet. All these were as a result of a break-up that the student was unable to deal with positively. Such cases are too common within college campuses. In this case, the student bullying the ex-girlfriend had access to information that embarrassed the girl when revealed to the public. This, according to stopbullying.gov, is a form of a power imbalance between the bully and the bullied. The increasing occurrence of bullying in colleges has prompted administrators to implement anti-bullying policies. However, this has not been easy as there are challenges that arise in the formulation and implementation of anti-bullying policies, especially on school campuses. It is worth noting that these policies are necessary to protect students from the dire effects of bullying, and as such, the first amendment challenges to such policies should be addressed. To create a better understanding of this issue, I researched the impact of bullying on college students, as well as the challenging nature of anti-bullying policies with respect to the first amendment.
What are the Effects of Bullying?
Bullying causes great harm to the victims in terms of their academic, health and social life. According to Wolke and Lereya (2), victims of bullying experience difficulties in their academics, which results in them attaining lower educational qualifications. This follows them throughout their life because, with poor grades, these students are unable to specialize in a career of their choosing. Further, lower educational qualifications imply that they will be less competitive in the job market. People who have been bullied also have a hard time managing their finances in their adulthood (Wolke and Lereya, 2), and this can result in frustrations and anger because they are unable to meet their financial obligation. Thus, protecting students from bullying is important to ensure that they make good grades and become competitive in the job market.
Chen and Huang (19) reveal that college students who have experienced bullying suffer from poor appetite, which affects...