Why Is It ...

… that it’s been a wild year this week?

… that as I get older and remember all the people I’ve lost along the way I think to myself … maybe a career as a tour guide wasn’t for me.

… that when I die I don’t want y’all looking for me in sunsets or butterflies or wildflowers. Look behind you, that’s me chasing you up the stairs.

… that I stress about stress before there’s even stress to stress about, then I stress about stressing over stress that doesn’t need to stressed about? It’s stressful.

… that I want all of you who signed my 8th grade yearbook and told me to ‘Stay cool’ to know that I did.

… that I count my work days like I’m in jail. Three more wake ups and I’m free!  

… that things you find offensive I often find hilarious? And why does it make me happier than you?

… that when I was just 5-years-old a bear told me only I could prevent forest fires; why I was chosen I will never know.

Another One: Alyssa Morgan

Alyssa Morgan killed herself last month; she was 12 years old.

Now her mother, Nicole, is telling Alyssa’s story and how the administrators and teachers at her school, Southeast Polk Junior High, failed to protect from the bullies who drive Alyssa to suicide.

Nicole says that at home, her daughter was like any 12-year-old; she loved to draw and play video games and try on her Mom’s makeup; and when she came out as a bisexual, Nicole simply told her daughter: "We love you no matter what."

But school was a different story; other students bullied her, called her names, say she was disgusting, make her feel worthless, and before long Alyssa would come home from school in tears and she began cutting herself.

 Nicole says Southeast Polk Junior High  knew what was happening, but did nothing to protect her daughter from bullies. In fact, she says that when she took her complaints about the bullying to school administrators, she was told that Alyssa needed to "toughen up."

This is the same school where, just two years ago, 16-year-old gay student A.J. Betts also committed suicide after being endlessly, horrifically bullied. See his story HERE.

But even in the light of Alyssa Morgan’s death, the school takes almost no responsibility. On April 30, Southeast Polk Community School District Associate Principal Nathan Ballagh emailed a statement to a local news station:

"Over the last four years our students and staff have stepped up our bullying prevention efforts. A lot of our efforts are led by our students who provide us (school officials) insight to what bullying looks like in our school and community and what we can do to help prevent bullying. Our students have really been the driving force and have taken ownership in preventing bullying in our schools."

Sadly, though, Alyssa’s suicide was the 15th suicide at Southeast Polk Junior High in the last 12 years; that means more than once a year … every nine months actually … a student at that school commits suicide, and the administrators think they have it handled.

I have a solution, though, that might make administrators and teachers understand the problems: spend a week being bullied by your peers. Walk the halls and be shouted at, spit upon, pushed, shoved, called worthless, fat, faggot, nigger, dyke, queer, asshole, motherfucker every single day, every single hour for at least a week.

And then imagine that happening to a twelve-year-old and telling them to toughen up.

Zero tolerance means zero tolerance.

MSN

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Another One: Kardin Ulysse Lost His Eyesight After Being Assaulted At School

Kardin Ulysse, a fourteen-year-old Brooklyn boy, has lost the sight in one of his eyes as a result of an assault by a group of bullies in his school cafeteria. He's undergone two surgeries on his right eye since the June 5 beating at Roy H. Mann Junior High School in Bergen Beach.

“The doctor says he needs a transplant,” Kardin's father, Pierre Ulysse said. “For me to send him to school with two eyes and come back with one eye is really absurd....I want the world to know about this.”

Kardin was the victim of  a pair of seventh-graders who began shouting "faggot, faggot" at him. One of the boys held Kardin down while the other repeatedly punched him in the face, head and neck. It is unclear whether the bullies’ fists or pieces of Kardin's shattered eyeglasses caused the damage to his cornea. it is clear, however, that while Kardin was able to get free, the bullies chased him into the cafeteria where the beating continued until school safety officers and school aides finally intervened.

Kardin’s family has hired Sanford Rubenstein, and they say they will sure the city for failing to properly supervise the students. Rubenstein has called for law enforcement to investigate whether the attack is a hate crime and, if so, upgrade the criminal charges to felonies. But, because they’re minors, the two bullies were charged with misdemeanors in Family Court, and, again, because they're minors, these two thugs will not have their names released.

Kardin says he had spoken to the dean at his school, complaining about being bullied, for some time. In fact, he was attacked and robbed  last October, but, as if all of this isn't sick enough, let's toss some more into the mix with the news that the parents of another 13-year-old student filed a lawsuit against Roy H. Mann Junior High last year alleging a pattern of bullying. 

And, at the same time, a Department of Education [DOE] survey found that 63% of the students at  Roy H. Mann Junior High reported at least some of the time classmates are harassed or threatened based on their race, religion, ethnicity, citizenship status, gender, sexual orientation or disability. And the survey also found that 40% of the school’s students didn’t feel safe in the building and 44% said students threaten or bully other students “most of the time” or “all of the time.”

Nearly half of all students are bullied, or are witness to bullying, and yet the school seems to have done nothing. A DOE spokesman did say the attack on Ulysse is being taken “very seriously” by the principal, and added that Kardin's assailants face disciplinary action in addition to the criminal prosecution.

Just words. hollow words.

The school principal and the administrators need to be removed form their jobs; the bullies need to be removed from the school and punished to the fullest extent of the law.

This isn't just kids being kids and acting out. This is assault. This is a crime and it seems a lot of the schools in this country, as well as the officials in schools and school districts, are not doing enough, or anything, to stem the tide of bullying. Are we going to finally wake up to this epidemic when a child is murdered at school? Is that what it will take to make everyone pay attention?

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