Deviance And Its Consequences

Deviance and Its Consequences

[Author Name(s), First M. Last, Omit Titles and Degrees]

[Institutional Affiliation(s)]

Deviance and Its Consequences

The word deviant is used for an act or behavior that is not in accordance with the norms or beliefs of the society (Henslin, Possamai, Possamai-Inesedy, Marjoribanks, & Elder, 2015). It can range from a small act such as sitting extremely closer to someone to a major crime such as murder. Societies have made laws and rules to deter people from deviant behaviors. Deviant acts can be distributed into two classes, formal and informal deviance. The first one deals with criminal acts, for instance, robbery or assassination. On the other hand, the informal deviance is referred to as the acts that are may not be detrimental but are considered as offensive, for instance creating noise in public. The deviant behavior selected for this assignment is bullying.

Buying is defined as any aggressive or unwanted behavior toward a child or someone intended to bring harm to and this behavior is repeated over a certain period. It can occur in various environments but is more often found in the schools and workplaces. A recent news story shared one incident of bullying of 12-year school children that led to her suicide ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"jMPcdgA3","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(\\uc0\\u8220{}New Jersey school sued over bullied girl\\uc0\\u8217{}s suicide\\uc0\\u8212{}BBC News,\\uc0\\u8221{} n.d.)","plainCitation":"(“New Jersey school sued over bullied girl’s suicide—BBC News,” n.d.)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":918,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/orkqtrjP/items/RHEVJMS7"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/orkqtrjP/items/RHEVJMS7"],"itemData":{"id":918,"type":"webpage","title":"New Jersey school sued over bullied girl's suicide - BBC News","URL":"https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44552864","accessed":{"date-parts":[["2019",8,22]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (“New Jersey school sued over bullied girl’s suicide—BBC News,” n.d.). The victim named Mallory Grossman, who committed suicide after suffering from cyberbullying. Her parents and family sued the Rockaway Township School District for their negligent behavior. According to the family and parents, the reason for her suicide was constant bullying from her classmates via online social media platforms and bullying in-person. The sixth-grader received humiliating messages and posts on Snapchat and Instagram, calling her a loser and insisting that she must kill herself. In addition, she was excluded from school activities.

The group that witnessed the case and incident were the school students, teachers, the family and the parents of all the students of Rockaway Township school district. He parents were already aware of the bullying incidents and informed the school to take the necessary action, owing to this fact they decided to sue the school for their due negligence. However, according to the parents, complains of bullying were ignored by the school management. Her family with the attorney held a press conference announcing that they intend to sue the school. After the case of Mallory, the school superintendent Greg McGann said that the school administration, staff, and teachers are committed to the safety and protection of students. In addition, they will continue to take care of the rights of students in the new school year. However, no reports or data is available about the necessary actions were taken by the school administration to reduce such incidents in school communities.

The lawsuit and the news coverage created awareness among the parents about bullying their child may be experiencing at school. After this tragedy, some funds were raised by an online campaigner for the family of Mallory and an online fundraising community was formed, named as Mallory’s Army. The goal was to reduce the incidents of bullying at school and allow others to share similar experiences if any, in the Rockaway Township School District. This online community also aimed to promote anti-bullying laws of the state to reduce further cases of bullying from occurring.

The case of Mallory reveals how critical can be ignorance towards the incidents of bullying or any similar deviant behavior at school. It also exhibits the importance of social norms to control deviant behavior (Henslin et al., 2015). It is the responsibility of school administration, teachers and staff to take notice of any deviant behavior in the boundaries of school in order to avoid any negative consequences. Every deviant behavior has negative impacts and in some cases, they can be worst, as confirmed in the example of Mallory.

References

Henslin, J. M., Possamai, A. M., Possamai-Inesedy, A. L., Marjoribanks, T., & Elder, K. (2015). Sociology: A down to earth approach. Pearson Higher Education AU.

ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY New Jersey school sued over bullied girl’s suicide—BBC News. (n.d.). Retrieved August 22, 2019, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44552864