South Hadley Schools chief: We're unfairly blamed in bullying-related suicide

[azurnoir]

South Hadley, Massachusetts (CNN) -- The 15-year-old girl who hanged herself last January after enduring months of bullying from schoolmates failed to alert others to her plight, the superintendent of South Hadley Schools said Thursday.

The girl, Phoebe Prince, "was apparently a very private person; she bore a lot without talking to friends or with her parents or with anybody at school," Gus Sayer told CNN.

He said it was school policy not to specify what disciplinary actions may have been taken against any individual student, though he said the latter case did not include expulsion and that the student returned to school.

But, he added, expulsion is something educators are reluctant to countenance.

"It's a terrible punishment because that changes their whole lives and what they are capable of doing, and they have to figure out a way to renew and complete their education."

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/04/01/massachusetts.bullying.suicide/index.html?eref=rss_topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3A+Top+Stories%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo

[strategery blunder]

1. Hey School: Maybe you should have done something about it!

BEFORE the suicide! :grr:

[Ken Burch]

4. They probably secretly think that being bullied 'builds character"

n/t.

[Echo In Light]

34. They'd sooner rely on Damage Control afterward

[Ken Burch]

2. The school district is playing "CYA". What a surprise.

They've probably been shredding every piece of paper from each time Phoebe went to the principal begging for help.

And I suspect that if any of them are challenging the "what matters is winning the lawsuit" mentality, somebody else is imitating Judd Hirsch in "Teachers" when he kept saying "I CAN'T hear you" to Nick Nolte.

[Ken Burch]

3. So it's not as bad to let a teenager be driven to suicide by classmate abuse

than it would be to expect the abusers to "renew and complete their education"?

And the most important thing is making sure the bullies graduate?

[azurnoir]

5. Did you read the original story?

Cali posted it a while back, it's awful

[Ken Burch]

8. I don't remember if I read it, but I'm sure it was horrific.

Too many schools ignore this problem because they think that being subjected to cruelty is "just part of growing up".

[azurnoir]

18. I'll repost it

it was what the perps did after wards that makes this especially horrific

Little beasts: The untouchable Mean Girls


Like a lot of kids her age, Phoebe Prince was a swan, always beautiful and sometimes awkward.


Last fall, she moved from Ireland into western Massachusetts, a new town, a new high school, a new country, a new culture. She was 15, when all that matters is being liked and wearing the right clothes and just fitting in.

She was a freshman and she had a brief fling with a senior, a football player, and for this she became the target of the Mean Girls, who decided then and there that Phoebe didn’t know her place and that Phoebe would pay.

Kids can be mean, but the Mean Girls took it to another level, according to students and parents. They followed Phoebe around, calling her a slut. When they wanted to be more specific, they called her an Irish slut.

The name-calling, the stalking, the intimidation was relentless.

Ten days ago, Phoebe was walking home from school when one of the Mean Girls drove by in a car. An insult and an energy drink can came flying out the car window in Phoebe’s direction.

Phoebe kept walking, past the abuse, past the can, past the white picket fence, into her house. Then she walked into a closet and hanged herself. Her 12-year-old sister found her.

You would think this would give the bullies who hounded Phoebe some pause. Instead, they went on Facebook and mocked her in death.

They told State Police detectives they did nothing wrong, had nothing to do with Phoebe killing herself.

And then they went right back to school and started badmouthing Phoebe.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=7567610

[Ken Burch]

22. I did read this.

That poor girl was put through hell. And in twenty years, those girls will be running their town.

[The Magistrate]

6. This Sayer Fella, Ma'am, Needs To Find Another Line Of Work

Flipping burgers, clearing gutters, something more suited to his nature and the lights of his personality.

The teen-agers whose cruelty he overlooked should simply be hanged.

[Webster Green]

13. Hanged? Damn!..That's hard core.

I wouldn't have pegged you as the hangin' judge type. You seem more moderate than that.

I oppose the death penalty BTW. It's just murder committed by the state. IMO, that is a particularly creepy form of murder. :shrug:

[The Magistrate]

24. Serious As A Heart Attack, Sir....

"As he did, so he's done."

[Ken Burch]

15. hangin's too good for 'em.

Send their celphones to the chair instead.

[The Magistrate]

25. A Sound Point, Sir....

[azurnoir]

21. Good to see you here Sir

and I agree about the superintendent, this case actually shook me

[The Magistrate]

26. Indeed, Ma'am: An Awful Thing

[Ex Lurker]

7. the superintendent is being disengenuous in the extreme. The reason they don't like to expel

is because it counts against them under NCLB.

[Ken Burch]

10. Well, remember, NCLB was designed by a bully.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

11. Ted Kennedy was also a heavy supporter of NCLB

[Ken Burch]

14. It wasn't his idea though.

And you know perfectly well I wasn't bashing Teddy,

NCLB was a horrible sham. Not only did it fail to improve anyone's education, in many cases it gave kids worse educations because teachers were forced to "teach to the test", a technique that is remarkably useless in imparting any real learning.
You saw horrible stories like the Honor's student in Florida whose life was ruined because she didn't pass the bloody test(shouldn't it have been ENOUGH that she was an honor student?)

There were no positive results of NCLB, and there's no non-conservative case for it. If Teddy backed it, it was probably because he was in the minority at the time and it was a trade-off for something else he was working for.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

17. There is no "if". He was a strong advocate for it and it was not a quid pro quo of some sort

As did others. They thought it would make things better in the long run. While the current administration is proposing major changes, they are not fully eliminating it either. I agree that many parts of it are a dismal failure. Some claim that there was always nefarious intent, but given the support it had on the Hill from Dems, I am confident that they did not believe that at the time.

[Posteritatis]

16. And schools would rather be rid of the victims than the bullies in general. (nt)

[azurnoir]

20. Not NCLB much more likely

the social economic class of the families the perps came from they were "privileged" so to speak

I reposted the original story above

[Quantess]

9. This just proves that the school doesn't take bullying seriously.

They didn't then and they don't now. They just don't get it.

[HughBeaumont]

29. It seems very few schools do.

We've learned nothing at all in decades when it comes to this sore spot.

[bluestateguy]

12. Public school administrator bureaucrats

already prepared with the excuses.


And yes some of these monsters should be expelled and yes their permanent record should be fucked up. Perhaps when they find themselves flipping burgers for a living ten years from now, they will look back on some of the poor choices they made in life and learn their lesson.

[Suji to Seoul]

19. That one quote about being a "private person" would spur me to vocally demand his

immediate resignation and then prompt me to sue the high school, the district, the teachers involved personally, the parents of those accused personally, the principal and administration staff of the school personally and this heartless, ass covering Superintendent.

What a heartless bastard. I was an assistant principal before I became a University professor in China, and I used to laugh that I would be lousy because I didn't take the proper courses, which are as follows:

EDL 101 - Heartless and Empty Rhetoric
EDL 445 - Asshole training
EDL 399 - Faculty Demoralizing
EDL 482 - Testing Test-based Class Tests for Test Givers
EDL 398 - Reseach Methods: Buck Passing, Blame Deflection, Glory Hogging

[Quantess]

28. You missed out on crucial graduate courses!

;)

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

23. Nice to know the administration at my old high school found work

"It's a terrible punishment because that changes their whole lives and what they are capable of doing, and they have to figure out a way to renew and complete their education."

They were openly pro-bully, and more concerned with not taking any action that might jeopardize the future of the bully than those they were terrorizing.

Especially bad was much of the bullying took a racial twist with white trash losers lashing out at Vietnamese and Iranian immigrants. These were predominantly the children of the South Vietnamese and Shaw's Iranian military officers - also known as our allies evacuated by Washington for fear of them being imprisoned or executed. But apparently this was perceived to be patriotic.

The only effective anti-bullying program is incarceration. I don't give a fuck what it does for their future, not that any of these losers had one to begin with.

A shithead who has know higher aspiration in life than to run a towing scam is not going to be materially harmed by being kicked out of school.

[uponit7771]

27. This is a stupid move by the superintendant, the mean girls will MOST LIKELY say that officials were

...told and statement will look calus in the face of the girls death.

[proud2BlibKansan]

36. The mean girls are going to tell on each other?

I'll believe that when I see it.

[piratefish08]

30. yeah right. a few weeks expulsion might have ruined the lives of the bullies.

I bet the poor, dead girl would agree.

Fuck that excuse - they should fire ANYBODY who was aware of the problem and did nothing.

[proud2BlibKansan]

31. Help me understand something here

If Phoebe never complained to her teachers that she was being bullied, then what was the school supposed to do?

[Toasterlad]

33. The Bullying Was Witnessed On At Least One Occasion By Teachers

Even were that not documented, I'd be disinclined to believe that 15 months of bullying went unnoticed by any authority figure at the school.

[proud2BlibKansan]

35. The situation the supt described on the news - was that the one time?

He said a girl followed Phoebe into class and called her an Irish slut. The teacher sent the girl to the office. Supt didn't say how she was disciplined.

I don't teach high school so I can't relate but I do teach elementary school (which is a much smaller environment) and you would be amazed by how many times kids go home and tell their parents they told me someone was bothering them when the kid hadn't said a word to me. I have had more than one conversation with an angry parent discussing something I was not aware of. Not just bullying, but other things, like assignments, etc.

And the reality is we don't see everything. Or hear everything. We can't. There is also a DON'T SNITCH fad gaining ground and we even hear that from kindergarteners. Somehow they have decided they shouldn't tell on each other. I used to have one or two kids a week whisper to me or slip me a note telling me they needed to talk to me privately. And that often involved another kid bothering them. But that hardly ever happens anymore.

I am not denying kids are cruel to each other. I am to this day amazed nearly daily in the cafeteria when I hear the way the kids talk to each other when they don't think any adults are around listening. I agree we have a bullying problem. And I jump in whenever I hear it. But we don't hear everything.

If these teachers at that school were indeed aware of this bullying and did nothing, then they should be disciplined. But I can certainly understand them not being aware of it.

[DevonRex]

37. I completely agree with you.

We all remember our school years. We have all seen bullying in school. And we know that even though kids try to hide their bullying tactics they are not always successful, as evidenced here by that documented incident.

Not only that, but someone at that school would have noticed this girl's unhappiness, no matter how hard she tried to hide it.

[tonysam]

39. Exactly. When in the hell are the kids going to take responsibility

for their actions?

The girl was clearly not all there to begin with, and this pushed her over the edge.

[Robyn66]

32. BULLSHIT BULLSHIT BULLSHIT!!!!!!

"It's a terrible punishment because that changes their whole lives and what they are capable of doing, and they have to figure out a way to renew and complete their education."

SERIOUSLY???????? I guess Phoebe's whole life changed didn't it.

This is SO TYPICAL and sounds EXACTLY like what I dealt with at my daughter's school. PROTECT THE BULLIES AT ALL COSTS!

THey treat the kids like "if they just weren't wierd they would be fine"

I am so angry right now I could PUKE.

[Lilith Velkor]

38. You didn't get indicted, chief, so maybe you should STFU while you're ahead.

[Golden Raisin]

40. "It's [expulsion] a terrible

punishment because that changes their whole lives..." Excuse me, Mr. Schools Superintendent, but those bullies changed Phoebe Prince's life too. They ended it --- almost as if they fired a bullet in her brain. Dead by hanging at age fucking 15!!! A young life snuffed out prematurely. Expulsion should only be the first and least severe step in the punishment of those bullies.