Hello, everyone.
I welcome you to my blog and another wonderful edition of the Hive Learner's featured post. Making sure that our community is safe should be the duty of every individual around and not just security agents. I have lived around people who do not care; they see an ongoing crime, and they don't even bother to help the victim, and they call it minding their business, which is very wrong. Some are scared of being called names or being considered people that lack coordination just because they blew the whistle and stopped things from escalating; for that reason, so many people don't blow the whistle or report a crime; instead, they watch it happen.
One time during my high school days some of my classmates broke into the exams office and stole the general mathematics question paper. Since they claimed not to understand mathematics, they wanted to take it and then give it to someone who could solve it for them, and they would just copy it and carry it into the exams hall. They brought it to me, and I declined to help solve it but did not report it or blow the whistle on them. Somehow the teacher in charge of exams and records noticed the missing question paper because he said 150 question papers were printed for SS1, and he is counting just 148.
The investigation started, and somehow it was traced back to one of them, a junior student who confessed to seeing him fly the fence on a Wednesday evening. He was a suspect, but the school discipline master punished him until he admitted to doing it, and then he was asked who and who knew about it. He gave a list and added my name to the list. The other guys were the ones that vouched that I was not among them, and that is the only way I escaped suspension from school, but the discipline master punished me for not blowing the whistle or reporting the issue until everything was uncovered. He said if not for the other guys vouching for me, I would have been considered one of them, but since they vouched and said I only knew about the question but did not follow through to take it from the office, it made me an accomplice.
Since then, if I know it will bounce back, I try to report or blow the whistle to avoid being labelled an accomplice or even considered the culprit. Lately we also live in a world where whistleblowers are not safe, and their safety after blowing the whistle is not guaranteed, and for that reason, many people prefer to keep shut for their safety and that of their family members because most of the time after blowing the whistle, you do not only endanger yourself but also your loved ones and people close to you. A single whistle blowing can put you on the run for the rest of your life, and many don't want that type of life for themselves and their loved ones; instead, they watch the crime play out and say nothing about it.
In order to get more people to do whistleblowing, we need to ensure their safety after blowing the whistle. The moment people sense that they will be in danger and the government agencies won't be able to give them the protection they need, they will be forced to keep shut. The safety of whistleblowers is what determines if more people go into it or stay out of it.
ALL IMAGES USED WERE GENERATED USING META AI.