“Get on the floor! Get on the floor!” ordered the assailant, dragging the college-age victim into a campus building and shoving him to the ground in front of an astonished student. As the vessel of his wrath curled up in a fetal position, the bully continued his harangue.
“Do you want me to hurt you again? Do you want me to sock you in the mouth? Where’s my paper? Huh? Where’s my paper?”
Unsatisfied with the answers he received, the bully reached down and shoved the prone target, then threw a lazy punch that failed to connect. After a few seconds, the victim managed to scramble away, and the assailant – whose rage suddenly and inexplicably evaporated –took a seat next to the befuddled witness.
“Sir – how come you didn’t help out?” the “bully” asked the student, who had silently ignored the fracas, which was staged as part of an informal sociological experiment.
“I think the big issue for our generation is bullying,” explains the lead actor in this melodrama, YouTube personality and activist Yousef Erakat. “Why does bullying continue, and why doesn’t anybody put a stop to it?” Erakat and a friend, Ali Amjad, devised what they called The Bullying Experiment, in which they staged incidents at several locations on the UCLA campus and video-recorded the reactions of witnesses.
In one skit, Erakat grabbed Amjad and rebuked him for running away, pointing out that “I know where you live.” In another, he seized his co-star by the throat and then threatened a nearby student, who briefly turned his head to watch and then left without a word. One student – a near-ringer for Community’s Troy Barnes – can be seen using his cellphone to record the confrontation, standing his ground when Erakat threatens him.
The choreographed pseudo-violence reaches a point at which Erakat jumped on top of Amjad and appeared to pummel him, and this provoked some students to intervene physically. The Good Samaritan in one incident was a burly male, who grabbed Erakat from behind and dragged him away. On another occasion, a small and physically over-matched – yet commendably defiant — young woman named Caitlin Estudillo actually shielded the “victim” with her body.
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