Bullying has become a blurred line between actual insults and jeffing at Washington High School. Jeffing is an insult followed by an occasional laugh or smile making the comment a playful joke.

“It’s basically like talking about a person, but you’re cool with them,” said senior Destiny Edwards.

According to a survey of WHS students 41 percent have admitted to experiencing physical, mental or emotional bullying.

For most, intentions of jeffing are playful. However, jeffing can be taken as an attack.

Senior Andre Grayson believes that because of its playful tone, jeffing can never be considered bullying.

“You can never jeff to a point where [people] feel like it’s bullying,” Grayson said. “People jeff for fun.”

According to counselor Susan Dunham jeffing often goes too far.

“Among friends it doesn’t mean anything and then it’s being playful,” said Dunham. “But, if someone really isn’t a friend, they really ought not to talk to someone like that.”

Grayson believes that it wouldn’t lead to bullying, it would lead to fights instead.

“I don’t jeff with people I don’t know,” Grayson said. “It can probably lead to problems. Problems lead to fights.”

But, Grayson isn’t the only student who jeff’s. According to the survey, 60 percent of students have jeffed with another student.

Jeffing can include joking about personal appearance, it could easily be considered bullying.

“They just want to have someone telling them they’re okay,” said Dunham. “It’s sad that they listen to someone who tells them they’re not okay.”

Furthermore, students usually don’t tell because of fear of being bullied, the bullying to continue or become harsher.

“They’re afraid that it will just get worse. It’s like that ‘no snitch’,” said Dunham. “That’s the culture we live in this country.”

With its blurred lines, jeffing can become bullying, which makes it hazardous.

“Bullying can definitely lead to suicide and self-harm,” said senior Thomas Crowder. “And it’s not a good thing.”

Unfortunately, it seems that because jeffing and bullying is obscured, they have both become a “norm” for WHS.

“No one notices it,” said junior Charles Ray. “It just goes with the flow.”

Edward Pouncil, WHS senior, endured more than his fair share of bullying. For Pouncil, the battle with bullying began at a young age and continued through his high school career.

“I started being bullied when I started second grade, all the way up to my sophomore year in high school,” said Pouncil.

Unfortunately, Pouncil later considered suicide to be his final answer to end the suffering.

“[There] were times I tried to commit suicide,” Pouncil said. “[There] were times I didn’t come to school, times I just tried to fit in with the crowd.”

Pouncil, who is also a bi-sexual student, endured being bullied on a personal level.

“It hurt me,” said Pouncil. “Them bullying me as a person.”

Because students don’t think about the consequences of their words, the outcome of what they say is ignored.

“Things like suicide happen,” said Dunham. “And when people think about that, their whole self worth is just squashed.”

With these incidents, it leaves the question of who is stopping it. For students, the feeling of being powerless stops them from standing up for another student.

“It’s hard to actually do something about that besides getting a teacher to break it up,” said Crowder. “Besides, I, as a student, don’t have any authority.”

Being powerless isn’t the only reason they don’t step in, if a student has a personal relationship with the student, standing up for them isn’t a problem. But, if a student doesn’t know the victim, they will ignore any signs of bullying.

“If you don’t know a person, it will be like: ‘why doesn’t it matter to me?’,” said junior Ray.

Unfortunately, the duty of keeping their school bully-free seems to be up to the students.

From the survey, 44 percent of students said that teachers do not intervene when bullying happens.

Senior Sha’Kayla Smith disagrees with the statistic, she believes that teachers do intervene.

“I think teachers take the initiative,” said Smith. “But, students don’t because they don’t want to become an outcast.”

For others, intervening isn’t questionable.

“I always intervene because even if someone is kidding, it still hurts the other person,” said librarian Shelia Blume. “So if it’s possible, I always intervene because of that.”

Blume also believes that if bullying continues, then it could have lasting effects.

 “High school is the last place you have a chance to change someone’s attitude about how they deal with people,” Blume said. “And if we don’t intervene every time then that becomes ingrained in the person. If you’re a bully in high school, you’ll get into other stuff in college, such as, sexual harassment or extortion.”

On the other hand, teachers also struggle with knowing whether jeffing is a simple joke or a slam.

“It’s hard to know the difference,” said science teacher Nathan Finck. “Depending on who they’re talking to, that line is pretty blurred.”

At WHS, bullies are also either glorified or stood up for out of fear and acceptance.

“[They] make fun of people and the whole class laughs at them,” said Ray. “It’s an accepted way of bullying.”

In the same way, students also want to be considered “cool”.

“They want to fit in,” said junior Cameron Reeves. “They want to seem cool with the cool crowd.”