I’ve never felt it was my job to write columns about pressing issues. I may crack the occasional Occupy Wall Street joke or mention presidential candidates, but for the most part, I enjoy making jokes about Rebecca Black and poking fun at No-Shave November. That’s what I enjoy reading, and that’s what I enjoy writing.

So, under normal circumstances, I would leave the recent Michigan anti-bullying legislation to the people who don’t spend their days thinking of how to satirize hyper-masculine commercials about diet soda. But bullying has always been a subject close to me, and I was surprised at how few people I talked to had no idea of what was going on. Granted, this draft law still needs to pass the lower house (a government-y phrase that don’t mean a lot to me because I doodled a lot in high school instead of paying attention), but we should all stay updated on this progress.

I’ll be the first to admit that I probably don’t have all of the facts, getting most of my information from dozens of online periodicals ,but from what I understand, this legislation is inciting a public “WTF?”

The bill says it “does not prohibit a statement of a sincerely held belief or moral conviction.”

Essentially, a person can bully as long as they believe what they are doing is right. I don’t think that is too much of a paraphrase.

This may not seem like much to some people, but if you’ve ever met a bully, they are typically very clever when it comes to being an asshole.

Whereas some people spend paragraphs tearing down a person’s self-confidence (thanks for the e-mails!), a bully can do it in a word, sometimes a look. They will see this legislation and exploit it as if it is their job (for some, this will be the only job they will ever be successful at), because the law doesn’t deter bullying — it outlines the specifics of how to get away with it.

With the horrible suicides that have happened in the past year as a direct result of teasing and mockery, this could be one of the most definitive periods for anti-bullying laws, yet instead politicians take this opportunity to nitpick about what constitutes “bullying.”

What we need is something that says, “For crying out loud, stop doing this!” without amendments and addendums — straightforward and with zero tolerance. Schools did it with drugs (hell, mine did it with the dress code), and it will work with bullying as well.

It’s unrealistic to think that a state law is going to stop kids from getting picked on indefinitely, because some boys will act effeminate, some girls will develop later than the rest and that kid with the giant birthmark on his face looks different. But it’s a step in the right direction.

It may not seem like a big deal to us now in college, but I’d like to think that we can look past our academic blinders for a second and look at the kids on our old playgrounds. Don’t look too long, though, because, well, that’s kind of creepy.

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