<p>Four students have been charged in the incident, one with third-degree assault and the others with first-degree harrassment: [Oneida</a> youths face charges after bullying leads to a 12-year-old’s broken leg | syracuse.com](<a href=“http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2010/11/oneida_youths_face_assault_and.html]Oneida”>Oneida youths face charges after bullying leads to a 12-year-old's broken leg - syracuse.com) Why this doesn’t qualify as a felony is beyond me - the victim has a broken leg, for God’s sake.</p>
<p>I remember that bus stop attacks were frequent when I was in middle school, though they didn’t take this extreme form. 6th and 7th grade boys had a pecking order of who could “take” whom, and there were many days when guys would pile off the bus and stand in a circle, watching as two of them slugged it out in the middle. It never occurred to the girls in my group to tell a responsible adult - we were fairly certain we’d be told to mind our own business. </p>
<p>Why did we feel that way? Many of us were bullied ourselves, if not physically, and we accepted it as the natural order of things. I don’t know if this may have been, in part, due to having grown up in a blue collar town with a poor school system. I wish today’s awareness programs had been in place then. Kids can’t protest bullying if they fear becoming victims themselves, or if they think adults don’t care.</p>