The one thing I have to ask in all this, is where are the vigilantes in this situation? I know when I was in school there was hardly ever any serious bullying because someone would step up and beat the snot out of said bully. If there was any kids being picked on in the schools I went to, when I was there granted, it was isolated incidents. There was never the level of bullying that happens now.
I blame the internet and social networking sites. If you had shit to say about someone it normally stayed pretty contained and only your friends would hear the shit you had to talk. Now you can go home and embarrass the fuck out of someone publically to a much bigger audience that would have never seen/heard about the situation. Shit you can do it immediately from your phone, you don't even need to wait to get home.
That being said, people still would have been fucked up if that happened back in my day.