I've been reading a lot of stories in the news lately that have my blood pressure up. It's time for JT to post her thoughts about one in particuler.
Bullying: I went through school and graduated exactly 30 years ago this June. I was the obese, smart kid with glasses. Not just fat but Obese with a capital O. I got the jokes, the stares, the having things thrown at me, all the way through school. One time on the bus ride home, a guy, who used to talk with me every single day, pulled the tip off a pen and then dropped the ink portion down my back. Needless to say, I ended up throwing out one of my favorite shirts and had to wear dark shirts so that the ink stain on my skin wouldn't show through for the next few days.
I heard all the jokes about wearing tents, when was I going to run away and join the circus, having the ground shake when I walked, and the see-food diet I must be on. When I mentioned it to a teacher once, I got told "What do you expect me to do? Grow up and grow a thicker skin." I felt the pain of auditioning for a group that I had the vocal skills to be a part of but because they did dance moves, I would never be a part of. My size made me stand out from the rest of the group and the director wanted it to be more cohesive.
I spent most of my teen years feeling isolated and not a part of everything else going on in school. But I survived. Low self-esteem and all, I survived. Phoebe Prince did not.
Phoebe Prince was a beautiful young lady from Ireland who lived and went to school here in the U.S. For months, she dealt with bullying and harassing behavior from other students. The school's procedures were used but laxly. After taking it for one final, really bad day, Ms. Prince committed suicide. Several students have been arrested and will pay nearly as big a price, because with any felony conviction comes a lifetime of lesser chances. All because they decided to be idiots.
It's no longer enough to say it's a part of life, a passage that all must undergo to become adults. It's not enough to tell the bullied to grow a thicker skin, to pay them no attention. The old rhyme may say that words will never hurt you but it's a lie. Words hurt and in some people, they hurt to the point of danger.
How many times have we read about a student bringing a gun to school to "deal with the bullies?" How many times do children have to die because tolerance is a lesson they never learned at home? How many times do we have to hear a parent say that they're child could never say or do such things, only to have that child be brought up on charges for doing exactly that? Harrassing behavior hurts and always has. Now, it kills. We can't let it continue.
