(March 3, 2009) — A month after yellow ribbon week, bits of yellow can still be seen pinned on many students’ backpacks around the school. But how many of these students still follow the pledge that they made to keep their hands and words from harming others? Assistant Principal Kristina Provost defines bullying as any situation where one person takes power over another mentally, emotionally or physically. According to Provost , there is a really good student base at Clark compared to other high schools, and there are considerably fewer cases of bullying. However, the cases of bullying that administrators and faculty are aware of are only those that are reported to them. Junior Grigor Arakelyan* says that he has been teased since his freshman year, but he does not really consider it bullying. “People are used to bugging me, it’s like a reflex,” Arakelyan said. Students who are reported bullying go to Provost’s office as a consequence and oftentimes she puts into perspective what they have done as bullies. She believes that is the correct way to raise awareness among students who bully others. Arakelyan says that in the past he was teased a lot because everyone knew him as “the kid to pick on.” He says that he has been picked on since middle school. Reports by U.S. News & World Report show that a greater amount of bullying that occurs in the United States happens in middle school. However, Arakelyan believes he got over it because he got more mature. “I think people who get picked on the most are those who don’t know diverse groups of people,” Arakelyan said. He also believes a lot of the bullying at Clark is due to the fact that it is a small school. “At other schools, even ‘rejects’ have their own group of people,” Arakelyan said. Another form of bullying that has caught Provost’s attention aside from name-calling, the most common form of bullying at school, is cyber-bullying which takes place outside of school, started by situations that she believes most likely begin during school hours. The Journal of Adolescent Health released a study reporting that 43 percent of middle and high school students have been cyber-bullied in the past year. The most common victims of cyber-bullying are females between the ages of 15 and 16. Provost believes that the best way to stop all the bullying online or offline is by raising awareness. “Conversations are important to put things into perspective,” Provost said. Many reports suggest that the main reason for bullying in any given situation is to put others down in order to make oneself feel better. Both Provost and Arakelyan agree that people need to realize that people just pick on others to boost their own egos, not necessarily to hurt others.