Nobystanders.ME: Taking a Pledge Against Bullying To the Web

When it comes to growing up, bullying is something no child should ever experience. Unfortunately, many children do and it leaves them emotionally and sometimes physically scarred for life. It is not rare to see them growing up to be socially inept due to unfortunate events that have taken place in their youth. Specifically for this reason, students from Robert Land Academy, an all boys military school in Canada have stood up and created a special pledge called Nobystanders.ME.

As the boys say, usually when somebody is being bullied there is a lot of bystanders, mostly their peers. As they are just bystanders they tend not to take any action in order to stop bullies because they fear them. Actions such as these can be traumatic and can affect grades at school and overall productivity. Bullying affects us all.

We are the boys of Robert Land Academy, an all-boys school. We have taken a stand against bullying and hope you will too. We have signed a pledge that we will not bully and we will not be bystanders when we see bullying occur.

Nobystanders.ME is essentially an online pledge that calls everybody for an action. If you see a bully harassing someone don’t just stand there, go there and help them. Make the bully stop and feel like an outsider. Make him feel that he is not the one in control. Only then will the bullying stop and it usually doesn’t take long. Most of the bullies will stop after just 10 seconds, and those 10 seconds are enough to save somebody’s life.

The pledge

The boys pledged:

I will not be a bystander. I will not look away and pretend it’s not happening.

I will speak up when I see someone being bullied or know they are being cyberbullied. I will encourage others to speak up too. And we will make the bully the outsider.

And if it is something I cannot handle on my own, I will tell someone. I will get help if I need it because I know I do not have to do it alone.

Bullying may start with someone else. But it stops with me.

Although it seems that these days bullies are not so often, they are. They have taken a different shape, thus bullying people online and achieving the same effect as with the psychical bullying. It is up to us to make sure that bullies are fully aware of the consequences of their behavior and how it affects the whole community. We cannot allow young children to have traumas such as these. We have to help them and make the bullying stop by any means.

We have taken the pledge, now how about you?