Was surprised to find this on the women's ivillage board - school adm & teachers need to be held responsible for their incompetence in the following tragedy...
>It's Time For Us to Wake Up and Smell the Bullies
by Jenny Isenman
Recently the New York Times reported on the Phoebe Prince story of bullying to the nth degree. Phoebe, after three months of torment, stalking, and possibly statutory rape, committed suicide in an attempt to end the persecution. No one knows who to blame, but everyone is pointing fingers. How much did the teachers, the parents, the superintendent, the principal, or other students know and why wasn’t this handled appropriately?
We all remember bullies as kids, the people who took your lunch money, or made you do or say things you didn’t want to do or say. But, with the Internet, cell phones, Facebook and other social networking sites, bullying can be far more defamatory and widespread. This isn’t a case of having to give up your Twinkies; this is a slanderous campaign in which a young girl, trying to get through adolescence—which is hard enough as it is—was maliciously driven to take her life.
As a parent, stories like this are so scary. What we want most is for our children is for them to be happy and to thrive; here's a case of an unhappy girl who could have been saved. The school system had three months to handle this issue and, instead, it handled itself.
It was reported that teachers were often consoling Phoebe; where were these incidents logged? Where were the students who recently claimed to have witnessed the hazing? What was the principal doing to stop the bullying? Where was the intervention? Most important, who was taking Phoebe and this issue seriously? No one. Her mother claimed she went to the school board twice, but there was no record of their complaints. There was also little action taken against the nine girls making Phoebe’s days feel more like nightmares.
Stories like this need to be told. They need to be relayed from parent to parent and principal to principal, and there should be severe repercussions for both the offenders and the schools in which hazing occurs. There need to be ways that students can anonymously report the incidents so they don’t fear for their own safety. No teen wants to be the subject of one of these defamatory campaigns, but many, I’m sure, saw the Facebook postings and Tweets about Phoebe. They need to be taught to report this bullying, and the parents and administration need to work together to stop it, or remove the hazers from the schools.<
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