Classmate Response

After looking through a few blogs, I decided to take a quote from a freshman that I honestly don't know very well, but I found Stan's blog interesting, and found good quotes that related to the ASTI Constitution a lot.

"When you are the one bullying you feel powerful and you feel very that you are in control of what ever it is that is going on. Sometimes you feel like you have to bully to fit in with a certain group of friends and in this situation your options are limited because if you bully them then you are friends with the new people but then you feel bad because you hurt the feelings of the kids who were being bullied, and then if you don’t bully them you feel good because you did the right thing but then you are the one who is bullied."

"When you are the one bullying you feel powerful and you feel very that you are in control of what ever it is that is going on. Sometimes you feel like you have to bully to fit in with a certain group of friends and in this situation your options are limited because if you bully them then you are friends with the new people but then you feel bad because you hurt the feelings of the kids who were being bullied, and then if you don’t bully them you feel good because you did the right thing but then you are the one who is bullied."

What Stan says connects to the ASTI Constitution in a few ways.  The ASTI Constitution reminds us to include, not exclude other students, and when Stan talks about how you feel like you need to bully others to fit in with some groups of people at times, you are not included in the group unless you decide to join the group and bully others.  To make the ASTI environment more friendly and inviting, we need to accept other for who they are, and like them for their perfection and their flaws.  We should learn to utilize each other’s differences to make friendships stronger, because that is also what brings us closer together, and makes us more diverse and unique. 

At ASTI, we also need to accept others for who they are, instead of trying to change them, so they aren’t themselves, or excluding them for being different.  We need to accept that everyone is different and can’t always be what you want them to be: nobody’s perfect.  We shouldn’t have to do things (especially mean things) to gain acceptance into a group.  We should be accepted for who we are and not who we try to be or act like we are.  Each and every one of our personalities are unique, and if one characteristic is changed so you can fit into a group, we are not being truthful to ourselves or others.

Another way that Stan’s blog post relates to the ASTI Constitution is that he talks about how others feel when people bully them, and he understands the view of where other people are coming from, and are empathetic to how they feel in situations where they are bullied by others or when someone is in the predicament where they have to choose between bulling others to impress a group of people, or to be nice to others and not bully them, but often times become a victim of bulling themselves.  

P.S. my internet crashed, so I'm posting this at Borders >.<