Missouri Town To Vote On Proposal That Will Make Bullying Illegal

We spoke earlier this week of the joint YouTube-Beatbullying development that, you guessed it, addresses the issue of thuggery perpetrated both on school playgrounds and ones constructed on the Web. This next story, though not specifically related to the abovementioned announcement, also concerns the act of cyberbullying.

It has to do with a particular case in a particular American town called Aldermen, and involves the demise of a 13-year-old by the name of Megan Meier, who, subsequent to a barrage of cyber-abuse dealt by an individual three years her senior, committed suicide.

The impact of the story, some of my might agree, will presumably reach an international scale. Why? Well, if you found that the judicial structure of your city or town was seriously looking to make online harassment illegal, you too would likely think the story bound for replication in a great many societies elsewhere, would you not?

Cyberbullying has now effectively grown in the past few years to become an international concern, and naturally so. The world is ever more globalized, and that means things, good or bad, are quite easily spread fast – and far.

So it’s somewhat fitting, however regrettably, that a once-very-local thing (for lack of a better word) like bullying now gets the attention of many major media outlets and leads to the establishment of entire organizations whose purpose it is to combat societal hostility, whether such hostility is transferred by way of physical, verbal, or digital abuse.

Yet, never before – at least not to my knowledge, anyhow – has any societal structure, be it a city or suburb or rural spread chosen to take up the issue of bullying to the point of a vote on its supposed illegality.

Now, to put this particular story of harassment concerning the abuse of 13-year-old Ms Megan Meier into perspective, this isn’t something being addressed by a state supreme court, and certainly not a national court. And The Hague? They’ve got more pressing matters to deliberate over. No, this is an issue being handled by the single town of Aldermen, Missouri, located near the metropolis of St Louis.

Nonetheless, it’s drawn the attention of the national newspaper USA Today, and I presume it will proceed to reverberate through several other media outlets as well. Perhaps even the internationally renowned New York Times will soon choose to pick it up.

And rightly so, I think. Many years ago, something we consider now to be illegally, dubbed “domestic abuse”, was tolerated. It was an issue which more or less was to be disputed in the home, not the courts. Yet eventually, there came a time that prosecutors brought the issue to the docket. And, well, the rest is history.

The same may indeed be eventually be said of bullying. Not the minor stuff. Not silly sibling rivalry. Not banter said in passing. But instances of critical concern, where true hatred is at play and is serially administered by the “hater”. Those issues definitely do deserve to be put before judges and juries, particularly if they lead to irreversible damage, as was the case with Ms Meier.

What do you think? Is the attention on the Aldermen matter warranted? Let us know in the comments below!