Thanks for the link! That’s a terrific article, and it covers more than just bullying.
Also, don’t forget that you choose where you go to college. I went to a small liberal arts college populated by wiedos. It wasn’t that there weren’t big guys there, but they were mostly “gentle giants.” any outright bullying would have been met with contempt and ridicule long before the law was involved.
Similarly, math nerds with good grades will go to Stanford and MIT or somesuch where they will be in the majority.
Thanks, Wesley and pepperlandgirl. I’ve got to plead ignorance in that case, I don’t really watch those types of shows, so I honestly was really confused about what you were talking about.
The judge and reality TV thing rang clear as a bell, not that I watch either of those. Maybe I’ll have to sit down and watch an episode of one of those shows to fully understand your points. Thanks.
I’m not sure where you went to highschool, but let me tell at mine there was plenty of relief for sexual tension. And plenty of partying/drinking/having sex.
Well, it seems everyone has basically restated what I said in my first post.
So Wesley, this is supposed to be Great Debates, and it looks like we’ve shot down your OP pretty well…are you going to reply?
/hijack
I enjoyed this article. Fairly interesting and well thought out. However I do have a few problems with it. He seems to say that ‘nerds’ which he equates with intelligence, are better then there peers. That they will be far more successful in life, and that they are a step above their peers. I think he is justifying his own lack of social skills. I am a fairly intelligent person, was an Ontario scholar and went to University. I was also in the special smart kid program until grade 10 (I left because I was tired of busing it to school). I was not a loser in highschool and its not because I’m an athelete or especially good looking. Its because I never attempted to make anyone feel stupid. To me that is the main problem with ‘nerds’. They attempt to laud there superior intelligence over people, much like the cool kids do with their popularity. I say many an example of this on the school playground. My fellow smart kid programmees would always be bragging about how smart they were, how stupid you are, blah blah blah. Obviuosly people will resent this and in turn will attempt to knock you down a peg.
I’m not saying I was never mean to anybody, or never made fun of anyone. Be it either for the way they looked or for their intelligence. However I tried to not make fun of someone for something they can do nothing about, such as intelligence or skin colour.
So it seems to me, while he does make some interesting points, mostly about school=prison and the lack of opportinity for the teenager in the adult world, all in all I get the feeling this guy still isn’t the fact that his teenage life sucked, he couldn’t get laid, whatever and so this essay loses some validity.
/hijack off
I also read that article (it was posted in a similar thread several months ago) and I agree with cdnguy in that I disagree with much of his essay. Yes, he hits on some truisms about opportunity for teenagers and the whole work issue, but these are facts and his editorializing just came across as trying to defend his crappy highschool experience. I was also an Ontario Scholar and was always in the enriched program. I was not particularly attractive (think: bowl cut) but I never, ever had a problem with bullies, I was never picked on, an in fact would say I was pretty popular amongst my classmates (at least, in a friendly sense. I still never went to the cool kids’ parties - of course, I wasn’t interested anyway). I also got along just fine with the weird loner kids and the bully-types. Why? Because I have social skills. I may look like a nerd, have nerd-like interests, but I also have the ability to talk to people, stand up for myself, and I have a decent amount of self-confidence; I was fairly outgoing, talked to everyone, and was a bit of a class clown. People like funny.
Anyway, I’m rambling. The point I was trying to make is that his essay completely misses this point.
Bullying sure as hell wasn’t “gone” at my college in the 1970s! I wasn’t allowed to use the bathroom/showers in my dorm, I had to go all the way cross-campus to the Fine Arts Building.
It’s obvious Eve-they were just jealous of your beauty. They knew they couldn’t compete.
Bullying doesn’t go away in the workplace.
I work for a large manufacturing company and have attended some “all hands” meetings run by the production manager - the head of the factory part of the business. On more than one occasion he has issued warnings about workplace harrassment, so although I’ve never seen it personally, it must be happening for him to be issuing warnings.
And we also get periodic messages about sexual harrassment. I suppose this is just bullying in another form.
I think most of the factory workers have not attended college, so perhaps based on empirical evidence there is some correlation between level of education or intelligence and the tendency to bully.
I would be completely amazed if a single one of the bullies I knew as a kid ever saw the inside of a college classroom, and would equally surprised if most of them had not seen the inside of a jail.
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Some bullies, when they reach adulthood, simply become charter members on Internet message boards. 
Actually, from my experience the jail comment is appropriate, but in a different way. I know several people who were bullies in high school who went on to become police officers. While they certainly get to see the inside of a jail cell, they get to put people into them as opposed to spending time behind bars themselves.
You have shot down squat, and thats being generous. Most people have agreed with what i’ve said.
There was plenty of that at my high school too… but who threw the parties and who was invited? Mainly the more popular kids - the ones who were popular because they befriended everyone else, which is a learned skill.
About 1/4 of the way through the article, he points out the difference:
So far I’ve been finessing the relationship between smart and nerd, using them as if they were interchangeable. In fact it’s only the context that makes them so. A nerd is someone who isn’t socially adept enough.
I think what he’s saying is that nerds are focused on things other than social skills, and that focus can help them in the real world. Of course, social skills can help in the real world too, but the social skills needed to rise to the top in high school aren’t quite the same as the ones needed to connect with people in the real world.
What you’re describing is just a form of bullying. Those kids are insecure about their social status, so if they can find someone else to belittle, they can improve their own status in relation (at least in their own minds). The article uses a “treading water” analogy to describe it - to keep yourself above the water, you push the water down.
Hell, I did some of that myself. But I also got along with the people I made fun of.
Perhaps your own experience is coloring your perceptions. There are (or at least were, IME) an awful lot of high school students who aren’t partying and getting laid, or at least think that everyone else is doing it a lot more than they are.
There are plenty of bullies at college. They are the ones with tenure…
I’m an older student at a university, and the bullying is still there, just not as overtly as in high school. For example, it’s usually a less-than-subtle look of total disdain, as though the target of that look were pond scum. I’ve noticed that it seems to be freshman girls doing it.
I think that it mostly has to do with these girls having been the popular ones in high school. Now that they’re in college, and the boundaries between groups are nonexistent or at least very blurry, they don’t know what to do. Their social cues are gone, and so while they’re not physically bullying, they’re using body language and other non-verbal communication to try to get that pecking order back. Over time, though, they outgrow it as they realize that college is much more fluid than high school ever was.
Amazingly enough, the people I find to be friendliest and most open-minded are the kids who were nerds in high school. They’re there to get their degree, make a few friends on the side, and have a little fun. They’re not interested in the gamesmanship that so many other groups are.
Robin
Just want to put in my own two cents. I was thick into the Greek system in college, and found little difference in tolerance/intolerance levels between those in the Greek system, and college students as a whole. The stereotypes non-Greeks carried around about those in the Greek system were really something, though.
Ditto and seconded.
Though I’ll freely admit that my association is with the better half of the Greek system. Our house was alcohol-free (though the members weren’t ;-), so we ran a cleaner and tighter academic ship, with none of the stereotypical “frat boy” crap. Most houses were not the same, but they weren’t as bad as they are made out to be. Except for the house next to us. They were assholes and their house stank of urine.
The REAL trouble spots were the band and co-ops.
Pretty much any tight grouping of college-age kids - hell, grouping of any people - is going to result in something approximating stupidity, including cliques, politics, and infighting. There is bullying from the kindergarten sandbox to global politics.
Not sure where you guys went to college but my college had plenty of meathead frat-guy dickheads. Every weekend there was some asshole who had to much to drink and started trouble. It also happens to be an excellent engineering school so go figure.
I’m also not sure where you guys went to high school, but smart person <> nerd and all smart people in my school did not endure daily beatings. People who were small and weird usually were the ones who got picked on.
Also, I don’t think most guys get laid as much as other people think (rule of three and all that). A buddy of mine made some outradgeous claim about how many women he slept with in his lifetime. Me and another dude who he met in college basically called him on it. Between the two of us, we had know him since high school. We knew all his girlfriends. Since we always went out drinking together we had a pretty good idea how often he hooked up. So in other words, if your drinking buddy who you hang out with every weekend says he slept with 200 women or something, it’s pretty much impossible unless he’s leading some double life or something.
To answer the OP, there are less bullies in college because a) people are slightly more mature, b) it is not as closed a system as high school where everyone knows everyone and can form instant opinions based on who they associate with. This allows most people to form that critical mass of friends and social networks that keeps them from being attractive targets for bullies c) it starts to become a more serious legal issue and d) most schools will not tolerate bullying or hazing
My advice to any high school freshman concerned with bullying: play a sport, particularly a contact sport. You will endure a month or so of hazing, teasing, getting knocked around, and being shit on by big upperclassmen. After this, you will get less and less of it, then when the season is over you will probably not have to deal with bullying again unless you do something to deserve it.
This is what happened to me. I played two sports my freshman year, wrestling and rugby. Believe me, if you’re a 5’5", 145 lb freshman and you can hurl yourself at props 2.5 times your size without fear, you WILL be respected by the “bullies,” at least the ones that see you do it.
Most of the biggest “bullies” at my high school were on those two teams, incidentally, and I was friends with most of them by my junior year.
(This approach is only for those willing to prove themselves at sports. Others might have to resort to fighting. And I’d wager that the same thing would work; even if you get your ass handed to you, if you’re willing to fight a huge bully as a freshman in high school your chances of being left alone will improve DRAMATICALLY versus not doing anything and being labeled a target.)
Kids nowadays are being taught to ignore bullies, and that doesn’t work. You have to fight back, or at the very least stand your ground and don’t run away.