Why is the bully problem gone in college

Great Debates
1

I am sure that there are some bullies in college, but I have been in for 2.5 years now and have never seen one/any. In high school, junior high and grade school there was a pecking order and there were bullies/assholes. However once you get into college they are gone. Not only that, but those who would be harassed in grade school or high school are left alone in college. When i went to junior high and high school the morbidly obese, the albinos, the poor and all those who were abnormal in some way were mocked and harassed. When i see people like that in college they don’t seem to be getting harassed (i’m not with them 24/7) but even if they do i assume the nature and consistency of the harassment is 90% lower than it was in high school.

So why do bullies not really exist in college? Is it because you are changing classes every 4 months and never have a chance to build a pecking order? True in grade/high school you are together 35 hours a week for up to 12 years, but if this were true wouldn’t work scenarios with people who work together for 10+ years have bullies and in crowds just like junior high? But they don’t.

I doubt its maturity, that people just somehow mature out of bullying over the summer after 12th grade. THis culture loves bullies, if we didn’t then we wouldn’t have so many engineering shows on the discovery channel, simon cowell wouldn’t be famous and there wouldn’t be 10 judge shows on daytime TV.

Is it because people are more focused on education and in college voluntarily? I don’t buy this as alot of people view college as a necessity that they have to do, and don’t really apply themselves anymore than they did in high school.

Is it because the bullies are less likely to go to college? I don’t buy this as 50% of all high school students (i think) go to college, and there are still going to be alot of people who were assholes to fat or ugly or poor people in high school who leave these same types of people alone in college.

2

I think you dismiss some possibilities much too easily.

Of all my university friends, very very few of them are from any of my classes. I guess it depends on what program you’re in, but there’s very little inter-class socializing like you see in highschool. If anything its even frowned upon. You come in, take your seat and shut up. Nobody wants to hear you. Nobody wants you slowing down the lesson by asking stupid questions, etc. The point being, unlike in HS, there’s very little socializing in class.

Similarly, you discount the fact that we don’t spend as much time together. This is related directly to the above. When you’re not around someone very much, and when socializing just doesn’t take place, there’s no mechanism for a pecking order to establish itself.

Another point is that in university its a lot easier to “run with your own”. The nerds have their clubs to go to, the jocks have their athletics, etc. The less academically-oriented are free to not show up to class if they don’t wan to. This is in contrast to HS where kids of all flavour are forced into homogeneous settings where conflicts and tension are bound to occur.

As for your comment,

I suggest you take a look in the pit. I think there are many people who would disagree with this.

3

I suspect that a large percentage of the worst of the bullies don’t go to college, and the rest of them grow up. Or else they change tactics, but it’s a hell of a lot easier to avoid people in a university setting than in middle or high school. (My worst experiences, by far, were in middle school.) The people who hang on to a high school mentality in college or university, in my experience, are sort of looked on as weird and immature.

I realize guesses in this forum aren’t usually a good thing, but that’s what I’ve got.

4

Also, college is a much more open environment than high school, which is very nearly a closed system. There are a lot more people, they’re mixing more–the situation where a kid spends years with essentially the same people, for a few hours a day at least, disappears.

In college you’re expected to be more of an adult. Fistfighting on campus, open bullying, all that kind of thing is just considered to be juvenile and is more likely to earn contempt than fear or respect. Whether or not the people are really more mature, it’s expected for them to act like it.

Finally, bullying does exist; it’s just gone a bit more underground. The Greek system, as I understand it, has big problems with bullying, just in a different style. Certain other institutions or groups may also have the problem, but the Greek system is the most entrenched and obvious.

5

:confused: I’m sort of confused by what you mean here. What do engineers have to do with bullies? Aside from the fact that a certain percentage of engineers were bullied in high school for being nerds.

6

I think he’s talking about Monster Garage (Jesse James), American Chopper (Paul Sr), a few assholes on Monster House…etc.

I think the issue is simple. In high school, bullies are big fish in small ponds. In college, their leetle fish in huge ponds. Shoot, it’s true in the larger high schools too. When I moved to CA and went to a highschool with 3000 students, I was never aware of anybody bullying anybody else.

Also, and I don’t know how much this makes a difference, when you’re in college and you bully somebody, it’s assault and battery and you can go to jail if the victim chooses to press charges. Sure, it’s still assualt and battery when your kids, but you know what? The adults in charge–teachers, principals, parents–just don’t seem all that interested in putting kids away for picking on their peers because “kids will be kids” or “boys will be boys.”

7

I think the fact that the bullies are now over 18 and will certainly be arrested factors into things as well. A 14-year old and it may just be called Kids Being Kids but when everyone is over 18 the law will be involved.

8

Plus, in High School (at least around here) all that happens when guys get into fights is they get a couple days off from school. They still get all their assignments, so their grades don’t suffer. A year ago a junior picked a fight with my son (a freshman) the Friday before the last week of school so he’d get the entire last week off.

However, in college, if you get busted for beating somebody up, there’s that whole jail thing, and also you’re paying a bunch of money to go to those classes… which you’re missing… and they don’t send you your homework when you’re in jail…

9

In my experience, the bully problem tended to decline greatly after age 16. That’s the age when students could legally drop out. In my school, the people who were bullies were generally those who took the first opportunity to drop out. They didn’t want to be at school, and were very glad to be gone. We, in turn, were glad to see them go. I was friends with some people who engaged in bully-like behavior, and they often mentioned that they were counting the days until they could drop out. During my senior year there were very few bullies left in my class.

10

Well, one issue is the size. Any bullying relies on things like reputation and proximity.

My high school had 1,500 students. That’s a lot, but it is enough for people to become “famous” (or infamous) locally, for cliques to develop, for a pecking order to exist. Within the class, you share a lot of courses and spend a lot of time around the same students.

My college had 35,000 students in a city of 100,000 people within a few square miles. Generally, you choose who you associate with. If you dislike someone, you stay away from them. Unless you’re in a small major, you probably won’t have a class with them the next semester. You tend to hang out around people you like and can easily avoid people you don’t like. Any one person can’t really get a lot of power, because there are just so damn many people, you’re generally anonymous.

11

What i mean is that from what i’ve seen alot of the engineering shows on discovery channel try to promote the entertainment value of bullying. Watch paul Sr on american chopper or ‘big’ to see for yourself. It has nothing to do with engineers in the sense you are thinking of. I’m thinking of the motorcycle shows on discovery channel.

Reality TV sometimes tries to show bullying as entertainment too. Judge shows obviously have bullying for entertainment.

12

I think a major part of it is that the formerly bullied kids grow up. I was picked on a lot in Middle School and 9th grade, but as some point in high school I just had enough and made it clear that I was done taking crap from people. I think even the geekiest fellow has enough stones by the time he’s 18 or 19 to tell a bully that’s more obnoxious than threatening to back off.

Most bullies are not really tough, and once you see past that, they lose their capability to intimidate pretty quickly.

13

Put me down for the Freudian explanation. Once out of their parents’ iron grip, students start partying and having sex. This provides for a more relaxed and psychologically healthy environment. Thus there’s less reason for bullies to develop.

Contrast that with high school, where you have students in the full fires of puberty put in a co-ed situation 40 hours a week without relief for sexual tension. That’s a recipe for violence and aggression.

14

This web-article"Why Nerds are Unpopular" is a very good read about the whole phenomenon of being “popular” in highschool.

15

I saw a bit of bullying at uni, in the music department. I was only on the fringes of it, but affected because of a case of ‘mistaken identity’ – in the music department, amongst the majors, were two major cliques, and they were actually rather vicious to one another. If you weren’t in either clique, they left you alone. For some reason, one of the cliques got it into their head that I was in the opposite faction, and I spent a bewildering few weeks where I had people come up behind me and push me, try to take my shoes off by stepping on my heels, ‘accidently’ knocking my books off my desk – all accompanied with very loud, very fake 'Oh, SORRY!!!‘s. Straight out of little kids’ actions.

It got to the point where I honestly felt I was back at school, and was wearing me down; I finally stopped after class to speak to the professor about it (much of the harrassment occured in this one class), and he was just as baffled as I was. A girl who was staying a bit late who was in the department overheard me speaking to the professor, explained what was going on, and she spoke to the people in the clique and told them I wasn’t involved with the other clique. The harrassment stopped as if someone had flicked a switch!

The cliques weren’t department wide; just the same year I was – as it happened, the leader of Clique A failed some of his classes that year and had to resit his exams. Without him, his clique fell apart, and since the other clique no longer had anyone to harrass, they pretty much fell apart, too.

Who knows what on earth it was all about. Maybe too many operas, I don’t know.

But from what I can gather from friends in other arts’ departments, like music, art, and theatre, because you have a smaller group of people taking many of the same classes, high school-style bullying can occur. I’ve also seen and experienced it in graduate school, where again you have people in close proximity. Not on the scale of junior high and high school (bullying in grad school tends to me more mental games than people physically intimidating you).

For the most part, though, it’s as everyone else has said – the university population in general is so large and diverse, that high school style bullying is non existent. I do recall arriving for the first day of a class in my second or third year and encountering a girl who had been amongst a group who hassled me in high school, and she kept trying to be friends with me, because no one from her clique was at this uni but her…

16

Well, it’s not completely absent, as typified in pop culture by caricatures such as Omega Theta Pi fraternity, of Animal House fame. The bullies, being in a minority and far outnumbered by the preps and geeks, retreat to their ivory towers and abuse one another, as well as their female counterparts.

They also earn athletic scholarships and bully one another on the practice fields.

I roomed with football players at the (now-infamous) University of Colorado at Boulder my first two years, and then rented a room the next year in a house next door to the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, who were a plentiful source of beer, buds, and Boulder PD visitations. :eek:

I was pretty geeky-lookin’ in college, and the only time I ever was harassed in a “bullying” manner was when I was on University Hill, where the fraternity boys congregated.

17

Even the classic jock bulies have to be more careful in college or they’ll be arrested (and some are) and once you’re on the coaches PITA shit list it’s often a short dance to getting tossed off the team and out you go. Adults just don’t put up with that shit.

In my time at the U of MD College Park in the late 70’s more than one athlete got tossed for getting into fights.

18

Unfortunately bullying reappears somewhat in the work place. College is a haven without much bullying because of the reasons allready given, and also because noone has strong seniority over anyone else. There are no bosses, team leaders, petty beurocrats who can use their position to bully others. Also because of illegality of assault bullying becomes more through intimidation and implied threat to job security etc. in the work place.
Astro I agree that often Adults just don’t put up with that shit. But also it must be said Children often have no choice but to put up with that shit, at least in schools of 20 years ago in UK bullying was pretty much expected and children were expected to put up with it teachers taking a dim view of people reporting bullying and making no attempt to stamp it out.

19

You’ve never worked in corporate America. I haven’t either, just so we’re clear, but I’ve watched my parents and friends in their jobs and listened to the stories of bullying and intimidation. It’s not getting your head dunked in the toilet, but it’s getting you job threatened if you don’t let the boss cheat at golf.

20

In addition to all of the excellent answers provided above, you can also factor in the diversity of college. In high school, for example, the bullies knew who they could pick on…they grew up with them. In college, they suddenly are faced with 35,000 strangers. Who knows what they will do? Since most bullies are cowards at heart, they won’t take the chance of getting the shit kicked out of them by a random stranger they made the mistake of bullying. That, and the age range is college is so much wider. High school is 15 - 18. College is 16 - 86+, even for undergraduate work. This tends to moderate some behaviors.

Plus most schoolyard bullies are too stupid to get into college in the first place. :smiley: