In the article, “Even popular kids are bullied in high school, researchers find” by Mary MacVean, she emphasizes the reality that bullying doesn’t just happen to the unpopular. Many researchers at the University of California are getting a consistent response from the teens that they have interviewed. They are all saying, “For most students, gains in status increase the likelihood of victimization and the severity of its consequences.” These researchers hope to learn more about the anatomy of bullying so that it can be put to an end. They put together a group of more that 8,000 students in 19 North Carolina schools. There results were very clear and concise on the information that was presented. What they found was that about half the students that get bullied are white and a third black but girls had higher rates of victimization. The researchers state in the conclusion, “We have very precise measures of the status and we have access to the social map of the school. We can assign a score to each kid. The kids don’t have access to that degree of precision.” So, as the issue progresses, the researchers will continue their studies and eventually put their information into a book or maybe a tome.
The theme that the author puts into this article, “Even popular kids are bullied in high school, researchers find.” The author puts all of these incisive information to convey you, the reader, that bullying is indeed a major issue. The researchers wrote, “Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that popular kids get targeted: If the tormentor is aiming to raise his or her own status.”