Students spend a lot of time in school, obviously. The U.S. Department of Education says that American schools average about 180 in-school days per year, which means that 2,160 of the 4,380 days that a student will experience in their k-12 career are spent in a school building. That’s almost half! For most students, this is not a welcome realization, but the “best years of our lives” are dampened or destroyed for many because of the often unsafe environments they occur in.  Statistics on bullying have found that thirty-two percent of parents worry about the physical safety of their child while they’re away at school, 282,000 students are attacked in middle schools and high schools each month, and 100,000 students carry a gun to school because they’re worried about their safety. The statistics about verbal bullying are even more frightening because verbal attacks don’t leave visible marks, and thus make the emotional consequences harder to recognize. Verbal bullying is by far the most common type of bullying with seventy-seven percent of students having experienced it at a time in their school life; this includes mental bullying and verbal abuse.

“Verbal abuse is difficult to identify and regrettably can be a common type of abuse… The use of words to punish is a very covert attempt to control… Verbal abuse is wrong and can be just has harmful as physical abuse,” defines about.com

“Mental abuse, also known as emotional or psychological abuse, can occur in close relationships, including parent/child relationships, marital relationships or sibling relationships. Mental abuse causes damage in the victim as s/he is made to believe s/he is worthless and at fault,” says E-how.com

If there’s  2,272 students at Davis High then seventy-seven percent, or 1,749 students, are being verbally bullied in some way or another, which is basically the entire sophomore and junior class plus 1/4 of the seniors . Fourteen percent of those 1,848 students, or about 277 students, have reacted badly to bullying. That means that because of the abuse they’ve experienced they’re depressed, have severe anxiety, poor self-esteem, or suicidal thoughts.

“These numbers are too high, and parents and teachers need to do something to stop it. Teens also need to stand together and put an end to bullying. When teens see their peers being bullied, they need to report the incident or get help. If teens band together to address these issues, they really don’t have to worry about being the target of a bully since most bullies really only attack those that are weaker than them. By standing together to prevent bullying in every school, the number of depressed and suicidal teens can drop along with those who fear for their life while attending school,” says bullyingstatistics.org