Bullying Still Present After Primary School
By: Samantha Rios
Tags: Bullying In Schools, Profile Story, Adult Bullying, Short Story

TRY as she might, Sarah couldn’t understand it. She just couldn’t do it. Wasn’t this something that only occurred on cushioned floors of a grade-school playground? Her bright floral jansport slipped slowly from her shoulders and fell clamorously on the floor, her brown eyes wide as looked onto the trashed dorm room. She just couldn’t understand it. Why, why, why– why on earth would they do this? When had they decided that the jagged words and snide snickers were no longer enough?

Eyes still gaping, Sarah moved her hand away from her side, swatting away at the unannounced wetness she found moving down her checks. Gazing up at the muted florescent lighting humming above her, she released a low grovel, her voice trembling alongside the assortment of thought and emotions running frenziedly across her mind, threatening to overtake her at any second.

Enough.

This was far enough.

Patting her checks with a bit more force than intended, she rolled up her gray sleeves and pulled back the hoodie adorning her dark hair. Kneeling down towards the shaggy grey rug, she looked under her wooden bed frame, and immediately located the bright canary suitcase hidden beneath it.

Reaching forward, Sarah pulled the heavy case towards herself. Hurriedly opening the luggage, she found herself praying to any God that would listen, hoping that, in some miraculous turn of events, she would be able to pack away all her belongings long before her roommates suspected she had done anything more than put her stuff away. Haphazardly throwing in the items scattered around the tiny living space, she forced herself to shut off the dizzying array of emotions she had so sharply experienced mere seconds ago.

She wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of shedding another tear.

Grabbing the last few items off her desktop, she closes the overpacked suitcase and picks up her bookbag. Looking back at the newly cleaned room behind her, she stares at the undone bunk bed to the far right corner of the space.

She hoped she would never have to see either of them again in her life.

Turning away, she lifts her head up and walks out of the dormitory, closing the steel door behind her.

This was far enough indeed.

“MOVING away was the only thing I could do, to be blunt.” Whisking back the dark hair adorning her face, Sarah looks down, clenching her hands together nervously. Looking up from her lap, she turns towards the large floor-to-ceiling windows bordering the wall of the University library. Staring out, she recalls, “It was either that, or a much darker path.”

When one thinks of bullying, we can often find ourselves picturing a bright elementary school classrooms or the locker-lined hallways of high school, where the darkness of the act may be masked under the guise of childhood or teenage angst. Seldom do we actually picture the true places this shape-shifting titan can lurk, such as the dapperly decorated dormitory room of a college institution.

“It started with small jabs here and there — ‘are you sure you’ll fit into that?’ or ‘I didn’t know Indian people listened to one direction’ type of thing — and then it began to escalate,” Sarah explains. “Half into my freshmen semester, I found a notebook filled with these terrible names, and some money from the safety box in my dorm was missing.” Looking away from the windows, she lets out a small sigh, tugging her hair forward once more. “I never did find out how they knew my combination for that safe.”

Sarah, who spent her entire freshmen year of college attempting to break free from this toxic environment, explains how she felt that, at first, she was reluctant to call this antagonism bullying.

“As silly as it seems now, I thought they were my friends.” Smiling softly, she brings her voice to a near whisper, leaning forward so as to not let her next words escape too far from her vicinity.

“Nothing like this was supposed to happen during the supposedly greatest time of my life, you know.”

Sarah was not alone in her previous understanding of bullying. When inquiring around Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus, students were largely unaware of the issue of adulthood bullying. One student even believed this type of harassment to be “something that probably only happens to certain types of people.”

However, recent studies suggest otherwise. A study completed in 2013, titled “Bullying Victimization Among College Students: Negative Consequences for Alcohol Use” by The University of Illinois at Chicago displays that in a survey population of 2,118 college freshmen, 43% of the population has experienced bullying at an educational intuition, and another 33% in the workplace.

Cyberbullying, another form of harassment which has quickly overtaken both adulthood and childhood bullying, has become quite prevalent as well, especially in light of the suicide of Tyler Clementi at Rutgers University.

Yet, despite the numbers and different shapes bullying shapeshifts into, adulthood bullying in both institutions of higher education and the workplace do not generate nearly the same amount of awareness or outreach that primary and secondary school bullying receive, and often goes unpunished due to its poor documentation and the victim’s unwillingness to speak.

“I want people to be more aware of this issue. I don’t want a single person that goes through [what I did] to have to feel alone or misunderstood again.” States Sarah, looking directly ahead.

“It’s when that happens that they win.”