Bullying in Irish Education

CHAPTER FIVE: Third-Level Students’ Experiences of Bullying in Ireland

100 CHAPTER FIVE Third-Level Students’ Experiences of Bullying in Ireland Lian McGuire  A THIRD LEVEL OF BULLYING It is, unfortunately, apparent that we, as a society, have a tendency to go from teaching our children that they matter as individuals, to introducing them to a working world where they can be told ‘you are merely a cog in the wheel’, and what they feel really isn’t that important after all. Even if unspoken, this shift in philosophical ethos from school to workplace, as regards how we treat and regard others, is clear, placing functionality and what is easiest or most profitable before respect and attempting to do what is right. From personal experience with victims of workplace bullying, it is the (often brutal) realisation of this that can cause the greatest damage and sense of betrayal. Given the emphasis placed on the importance of the ethos/ philosophy of an organisation by many researchers and practitioners within the field of bullying and aggression, it is interesting to note how little attention, in regard to bullying, has ever really been given to one of the prime areas of our society most responsible for formulating, influencing and disseminating the philosophies we as a society live by. McCarthy et al. (2001) state that bullying is an age-old societal problem, beginning in the schoolyard and often progressing to the boardroom; yet, while there is an increasingly large amount of data on school and workplace bullying, it is really quite notable the paucity of data that exists on what is, frequently, the link between the two. Research into the experiences and attitudes of third-level students towards bullying, both traditional and cyber-bullying, is negligible in the extreme. THIRD-LEVEL STUDENTS’ EXPERIENCES OF BULLYING IN IRELAND 101 It is within third-level institutions that many school leavers will have their views of the world, and those within it, shaped to a far more adult degree. Yet while their peers within the workforce are, at all levels and areas, questioned and analysed about their experiences of bullying, and what might or might not be done about it, those most likely to become the managers of businesses, formulate economic, social or philosophical theory, or create whole new areas of industry are overlooked in regards to their experiences of bullying and what their attitudes towards it might be. This is a notable omission simply because, outside of our school and working population, our student population is one of the biggest single groupings in our society. In Ireland there are approximately 250,000 college-level students (USI, 2010), which amounts to 5.9% of our population as a whole. This places Ireland well ahead of the 2–4% of many other European Union countries such as the UK, France, Italy and Germany (Eurostat, 2010), and comparable with Russia and the USA (US Department of Education, 2010) in terms of percentage student population. Southern (2009), in her analysis of the lack of data on bullying among third-level students, suggests that, in addition to the size of student population and the link between school and workplace, the change in higher education has led to what she terms ‘massification’; or a workplace-style orientation and competition between institutions changing the values of the university, where an expectation of value for money alters the behaviour of students, which results in stressors more akin to a working individual than had been the student experience prior to this. Ross et al. (1999) point out that university students comprise a sector of the populace uniquely exposed to pressure, especially so in the case of first-year students. The shift from school to student life consists of considerable upheaval, with many students living away from home and taking on the responsibilities that come with adult life for the first time, not least monetary issues, both in terms of their fees and day-to-day living costs. Friendships made and cemented during school life are dispersed, established social networks broken, and new ones constructed, all while students deal with the twin pressures of high academic achievement and future career goals (Vaez et al., 2004). These are considerable stressors; and stress as Leymann (1992), Zapf et al. (1995) and Vartia (1996) indicate, can not only be a result of bullying but a prime cause of it, with severe stress factors leading 102 Lian McGuire to frustration and the need to let out one’s...