Serial Bullies should be expelled and be sent to reform school

===Preface=== I would like to remind my opponent that he has the burden of proof in this argument. So, by definition, if even one subsection of one argument I make remains valid, a verdict in favor of Con must be rendered. Furthermore, I would like to remind my opponent that whether bullying is a detrimental part of society was never under question, only the severity of the proposed measures against said bullying in a high school setting. ===Statement 1.=== For brevity’s sake, now that a source has been given, I will concede this point for now, subject to further debate. ===Statement 2.=== None of the information claimed in my opponent’s last response to Statement 2 was contained in his source; therefore, by default, I will refute it. Note that my opponent simply cited the entire website as his source; this is an invalid citation. [1] Furthermore, the website cited is entitled, "Workplace bullying: what is it, how to recognise it, myths, facts, costs, and why me?" This debate is limited to the scope of high school bullying, so the entire website is irrelevant. Also, even if my opponent’s argument to this point is correct, it serves only to prove my original point, which is that sampling the size and severity of bullying is not feasible, due to the lack of an unbiased, unmanipulated source. Should the standard of determining the severity of a child’s bullying tendencies fall to information provided by the student, the bully could simply be convicted because he/she was unpopular at school or acquitted because he/she was popular with his overall peer group, making this type of decision making nearly impossible to implement. In summary, my opponent has not provided a valid citation to any of his claims made in this response or any valid argument to any of my rebuttal to Statement 1; therefore my rebuttal still stands. ===Statement 3=== For reference, I have included statement 3 to refresh my opponent’s memory. “All students who go to school for the sole purpose of degrading their peers and causing psychological injuries onto their victims should be 1) denied a free education, 2) sent to a reform school, and 3) be prosecuted by the fullest extent possible in accordance to whatever country/state/province/etc. they inhabit. Note that 1), 2), and 3) will all apply to all cases, not some combination of the three.” ===Statement 3.1=== None of the information contained in the two sources is relevant to this argument. According to the formalized version of the argument, the scope of this debate deals only with bullies in high school, whereas these two sources are referring to bullies in the workplace in the United Kingdom. (Note my opponent’s referring to the survey indicating that “42 percent of female and 15 percent of male employees reported being harassed”. [1] [2] This is a separate issue entirely, and not under the scope of this debate. Furthermore, my opponent did not address the issue of rewriting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. ===Statement 3.2=== In this response, I will prove, per my opponent's request, that a qualifying process is needed to determine the severity of bullying before sending the bully to a reform school, rather than simply institutionalizing a blanket statement that all bullies are sent to reform school. Since this policy is not commonly in effect, I will be forced to use a hypothetical situation. Furthermore, I shall refer to my opponent’s response to Statement 3.3 along the lines of the implementation of surveillance cameras in schools. Please pardon my use of stereotypes in this analogy. In this hypothetical, there are two individuals who could be classified as “bullies”: a football player who good-naturedly shoulder-bumps a teammate into a locker after winning a game, and a person who bullies LGBT-identifying individuals, say, a homosexual. The football player could be reported if the teammate took the gesture seriously and interpreted it as bullying. Since there would be solid evidence that he bumped the person into the locker, as it was caught on camera, and no unbiased source to verify or refute the motive behind it, the “all bullies go to reform school” policy would dictate that he would end up going to the reform school, essentially prison. However, the second person in this analogy could continue calling the homosexual countless humiliating or derogatory terms until he/she is either scarred for life or, like my opponent pointed out in Statement 1, could possibly commit suicide. However, the second person may have never been caught, since his/her slurs would not be picked up on camera over the racket of hundreds of people, and even if he/she was, he/she would end up going to the same reform school as the football player under the blanket “all bullies go to reform school” policy. Obviously, some kind of qualifier is needed to determine the severity of the bullying taking place. The problem is, as pointed out in Statement 3.1, that this type of qualifier is nearly impossible to obtain without resorting to a biased source. Thus, a different method of repercussions must be instated than simply sending bullies to reform schools. Though this may be appropriate in *some* extreme cases, such as someone bringing a knife to school, knocking someone out in a fight, etc., it is not acceptable as a general policy. ===Statement 3.3=== The problem with my opponent’s reasoning is that 1) not all bullying (for example, verbal or emotional bullying) is caught on camera, such as in the above analogy, and 2) the degree of prosecution should depend on the severity of the crime. Otherwise, the football player shoulder-bumping a teammate into a locker as given in the above analogy could potentially be prosecuted to the same degree as a senior who brutally beat up a freshman and left him/her in the garbage dump, as both offenses would fall under the category of assault and battery, and can carry maximum penalties of multiple years in prison.===Conclusion===In every subsection except Statement 1, which I conceded for the sake of brevity once a source had been provided, my opponent either did not include viable or relevant citations for arguments required them, did not include any citations for arguments requiring them, or did not produce a valid counterargument for my rebuttal of his original statements. In particular, my assertion from Statement 3 still stands that denying bullies a free education, sending all bullies to reform school regardless of the severity of their crimes, and prosecuting all bullies to the limit of the law without regard to their crimes is a draconian and unjust system of repurcussions prone to abuse. The burden of proof is on my opponent, and he has not met that burden. Vote con. ===References=== [1] http://www.bullyonline.org...[2] http://www.bullyonline.org......[3] http://www.bizjournals.com......