According to Canada’s The Globe and Mail, a group of teachers, totaling 4 million strong and hailing from Canada, the United States, Britain, South Korea, Australia and the Caribbean, have gathered to try and convince video game sellers to not stock and sell Rockstar’s Bully game. The reason for all this stems from the in-game story concerning the unnamed crew cut sporting, teenage boy named Jimmy Hopkins, who makes his way through his turbulent life in boarding school by indulging in behavior that these teachers say, promotes bullying. This behavior runs from dunking the heads of other students in toilets, taking pictures of them naked, and also beating them up.

The president of the Canadian Teacher’s Federation, Emily Noble, was quoted as saying that these educators were “asking retailers to be responsible” in marketing the Bully title. Noble stated that “Yes, they can sell it and make a buck out of this, but is this the kind of marketing that they want to be [doing], selling games that glorify violence?" Noble also asked this question: “what it does is it encourages kids to target other kids, to be a bully with other kids, and that this (Bully) doesn’t help us as teachers in the work that we’re doing at school. It also targets teachers at the school as well," The Canadian Teachers Federation, the organization at the forefront of this potential ban on Bully, has brought up the as yet unproven link between depictions of violent video games and duplication of such behavior in children, as their reason for wanting Bully banned.

A spokesman for Rockstar, Rodney Walker, offered the comment that the concerns of these instructors were an overreaction, when he stated that “As a matter of principle, we hope everyone starts off by saying, ’Okay, we know this is an entertainent experience.’" He continued on to say that “Video games are not just for children. This game happens to be about high school and it’s a tough kid in a tough environment, but it’s also one of the funniest games you will play.” Mr. Walker finally added that “if you don’t have our sense of humor, we respect that, but we think that fans’... voice has to be at least as important as the detractors."

Michael Hoechsmann, an assistant professor at McGill University, offered the opinion that simply banning Bully for being sold would not help the bullying problem that all schools face. Hoechsmann offered this statement: "as tempting as it may seem, I’m not so certain that banning this will somehow result in a more peaceful and more loving school population.” The professor also said that the school in which the main character of Bully finds himself in is an extremely inaccurate portrayal that violence is “the one remedy that he appears to have access to” and that “if there was a peaceful schools committee at the Bullworth Academy, maybe Jimmy would have joined the committee."

This isn’t the first time that Bully has attracted unwanted legal attention as, in 2006, two stores in England refused to carry the game, a Florida attorney tried to have it banned, and a Floridian school superintendent alerted parents to the content of Bully and suggested parents not purchase it for their children. This current campaign to keep Bully out of the hands of school children is all part of a campaign by various educators’ organizations to combat bullying and cyber-bullying.

We all remember what it’s like to be bullied and made fun of in school, but there is truth to Professor Hoechsmann’s words because bullying has been going on long before video games came to be and it is difficult to prove how Bully affects the level of violence and aggression in schools.