I expect simple behaviours here. Friendship, and love. Any advice should be from the perspective of the person asking, not the person giving! We have had to make new membership moderated to combat the huge number of spammers who register
No-one knows whether this poor kid was gay or not, and, frankly, it is irrelevant. If he was then he never got to find out the joys of being a gay man. If he was not then he never got to find out the joys of being a heterosexual man.
He was bullied to death at a school with a track record of bullies.
The Principal was unaware that this boy was bullied, but knew bullying took place.
So that is obviously just fine, isn;t it. Anyway, he was probably another goddammed fag, so it doesn't matter that much.
Except that what he was is a 15 year old BOY. And he was tortured enough emotionally to go and kill himself.
Did he change his mind after he hung on the rope, waiting to die, waiting to suffocate? Can you imagine that?
And the Principal knew bullying took place in his school.
The person whose life he was going to change by being loved never got the chance to know him.
And the Principal knew bullying took place in his school.
Tell me, who has the responsibility for making school a safe place and time for kids?
Ah yes. The Principal. The man who knew that bullying took place in his school.
A school principal is wholly, unequivocally responsible for making his or her school a safe haven where learning takes place. It is a place of education. This principal, any principal, has a clear duty to ensure that bullying is known about and solved. As soon as bullying is known about then serious work must happen in order to solve it. I speak as a former bullied kid and asa former bully, and the parent of a bullied son.
The Principal knew bullying took place in his school.
But he was probably a fag kid. They don't amount to much, do they? I mean, it's not as if he was going to fuck his wife, like a good Republican would. (Check Bill Maher out sometime)
I try, here, to provide somewhere where like minded folk gather who might just be able to reach out and do even a little in the cause of making the world safer for our kids. That's 'our' even if you have none yourself.
Location: US/Canada
Registered: September 2009
Messages: 733
By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) SEPT 14 | I live and work in a place where virtually everyone connected with either end of Pennsylvania Avenue and the Federal agencies inbetween lobbies hard to get their viewpoint across. Its all a game of yell and be heard, see and be seen, and these days, the more outrageous, louder and nastier is better.
The lobbyists and the politicians seem to forget that there are very real people affected by what goes on in the creation and implementation of public policies and laws that govern this nation.
I'm a political reporter and this is my beat, my chosen vocation covering these events, issues, and generally all this noise. But I am also Gay, and what really distresses me is when I hear and see groups advance causes that are wrapped up and presented as being in supposed good and care for fellow mankind, end up advocating laws that end up harming their fellow citizens.
Good examples of which are the onerous 'Don't Ask-Don't Tell' policy enacted into law and the so called Defence Of Marriage Act, both of which are little more than non-secular theology cloaked in the mantle of public policy.
But it goes beyond that. Right now there is a vital piece of legislation that would make inroads into stopping a problem that has become damn near a pandemic in this nation's public schools-Bullying. It's tied up in committee and maneuvering because instead of doing what's right for American's children, the alleged Christians of the so-called conservative right are claiming that it promotes the homosexual agenda and thus, its evil, sinful and now languishes.
In the opening of this Op-Ed, I placed a photograph of a young teen on his favorite horse. Pretty typical fare actually... The reason I placed this particular photograph is that the young man depicted, has ended his life. Here's the reason from journalist Kara Brooks reporting for Fox59 News in Indianapolis, Indiana:
Greensburg, Ind. — He was a teenager who didn't quite fit in. His classmates said Billy Lucas was bullied for being different. The 15-year-old never told anyone he was gay but students at Greensburg High School thought he was and so they picked on him.
"People would call him 'fag' and stuff like that, just make fun of him because he's different basically," said student Dillen Swango.
Students told Fox59 News it was common knowledge that children bullied Billy and from what they said, it was getting worse. Last Thursday, Billy's mother found him dead inside their barn. He had hung himself. Students said on that same day, some students told Billy to kill himself.
"They said stuff like 'you're like a piece of crap' and 'you don't deserve to live.' Different things like that. Talked about how he was gay or whatever," said Swango.
Principal Phil Chapple doesn't deny that students are bullied in the high school, but he said he didn't know Billy was one of the victims."We were not aware of that situation," said Chapple. It's clear though, on a memorial page created in Billy's honor that many people knew students bullied him. Fox59 News found comments like "everyone made fun of him"
I am angry, I am discouraged, but mostly I am fed up with the constant barrage of bullshit that religious type use to justify and feed the fires of bigotry and bias based on questionable theology at best, and at worst theology that is picked apart like a menu ala some items from column A and then some from Column B.
Here's the cost, another child has died. When I read the following entry from his mother on the memorial Facebook page created for him, I couldn't stop the tears from welling in my eyes and then running down my face:
Annie Lucas: We are keeping his horses, as long as they are breathing we will have them. And they miss him very much. None of his animals will be the same. Ever.
Nor will things ever be the same for her and her family. What happened to her son is direct incontestable evidence that the policies, the laws, the noise and din raised by the far right and those 'Christian' organisations like Family Research Council, Focus On The Family, and the host of others contribute to the atmosphere of hatred by teaching and leading by example.
Future generations of biased and bigoted children are being raised and as far as I am concerned, indoctrinated by these Christofascists.
They proclaim their Christian love... yeah, it sure looks like it doesn't it?
Oh and one final thought- Young Billy NEVER self identified as Gay, but should that really matter?
Location: U.S.
Registered: November 2009
Messages: 630
Disturbing...very disturbing. And the longer school officials ignore the issue and wait for direction from somewhere else the worse it is going to be.
I cannot see the need for national guidance over something this close to home. Let the Congress pass legislation and it won't make a difference. This is an issue for parents who are right in the faces of the principals and teachers, because if it is allowed to fester then those people who run the schools will soon feel the pain.
What Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris did was force America to look in the mirror. They were outcasts, they were hated...there was so much anger inside these two boys that they plotted and executed 13 people at their school, 12 students and one teacher while injuring 21 others. Then they committed suicide. What they did was so wrong, but was anyone listening to them? Did anyone care that they were being bullied?
How many gay kids have to kill themselves before America wakes up and sees what is happening? Will it take another boy with a gun to make that happen? Let the situation fester and I am afraid of the answer. This whole issue leaves me with nothing but anger.
Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read. (Sir Francis Bacon 1561-1626)
Location: Adelaide, South Australia
Registered: September 2010
Messages: 127
Fear and Loathing in the Loveless
Like the bullies in my school from age 7 to 12, teachers made no attempt to stop my daily physical beatings and ridicule by both the other students and most of the teaching staff. It continued into my first two years of high school.
It only stopped when I had to repeat my 2nd year of high school because I had started to not care about studying. I was suddenly a year older than my class mates and they left me alone because I was bigger than they were. I even made three good friends.
Why was I the subject of such treatment for all those years? It was because of my skin colour, pale white. I couldn't get a tan, and I couldn't play sport because of a heart defect. It was because I had red hair. But mostly it was because I was a happy boy who expected to make friends. I was as much an outcast as any ethnic person. Therefore I was unworthy of the teachers and an object of ridicule for my fellow students. Oh and I knew I was gay because they all told me I was, teachers included.
That was over 50 years ago. Sadly little seems to have changed except some teachers are a little more aware, and in some places the bullying problem is being addressed to a degree.
I was lucky, I survived, but daily in our societies, I see the bullies in the work-place, in managerial positions, in politics, and of course in the religious organisations that practise anything but the love they preach. That so-called, faith based organisations have the audacity to claim that they are trying to address the bullying problem and then turn their backs on accepting the sexuality of kids is nothing short of hypocrisy, and offering their version of love for the so-called sinner, denies the human condition of its rights, and compounds their hypocrisy with a felony, a crime against individual freedom which invites thoughts of suicide.
Believe or perish in hell, is bullying in the name of God, regardless of your sexuality, or any heavenly promises in another life.
To lose a boy like Billy Lucas is a tragedy and his death is a symbol of the loss that occurs deep inside everyone who is, or has ever been subject to bullying, whether it is in school, the work-place, or on the altar of someone's belief. Until the religions and their followers stop belittling, bullying or stoning people for not conforming, kids and adults will be sacrificed in the name of a cause that has no morality, no hope, or honour, and above all, no compassion. But then genuine compassion is a weakness; just ask any bigot, any scoundrel, any hater of life, they will tell you, or they will lie to cover up their self-loathing and proclaim their belief as all important.
Fear uses bullying as an offensive protection against another person who exhibits the enigma of, life affirming love.
Bullying doesn't just overcome the need to love, or even to understand it, fear in the bully supplants the possibility of love with hate, irrational blind hatred, thrashing, belittling, bullying, in defence of its own inferiority complex.
The bullying persona empowers the individual with a sense of control over others. The bullying agenda will create rules and laws where none are needed just to maintain its power, and it will seek to prohibit others from discovering what it fears most, what it can never understand while hatred controls it, that -Love affirms life.
This Love in this life is something that our so-called family value, faith based organisations have yet to comprehend, though I am sure they will defend their version of love, their belief, with all the hypocrisy a bully can muster. They seem to have confused loving with loathing. They are in fact loveless.
In the meantime, we can all work to prevent another tragedy by sharing the concept that to love and let live is nothing to fear, and everything to be encouraged.
DesDownunder
Call me naive if you want, but life without trust in the goodness of others would be intolerable.
Religious indoctrination: It gets better, without it.
Location: USA
Registered: April 2009
Messages: 429
I've been thinking about bullying for a few years now. My daughter began kindergarten and we have entered the world of schooling. I hope she never gets bullied or harrassed by other students. But I'm feeling rather good that she is enjoying her kindergarten experience. I still work with mentally handicapped adults and often hear lurking voices calling them stupid or retards. So, I do what I can do and treat these adults like any other adult. I hold tight to my daughter and wish her a good day at school.
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
A comment from the memorial page:
The principal's remarks are unconscionable. Suggesting that it was Billy's fault is appalling. I am ashamed to be a GCHS alum after hearing his remarks. Those of you who set up this memorial and are raising awareness are doing an amazing thing, and it's working! Keep up the fight, and hopefully, you (and Billy) will make big changes in the attitudes of your peers.
I can't find what the principal said. Help, anyone?
Location: US/Canada
Registered: September 2009
Messages: 733
In response to your question Tim; From Kara Brooks Fox59 News Indianapolis:
"In an astonishingly callous remark, Greensburg High principal Phil Chapple seemed almost to blame Billy for his own persecution: "Sometimes he created an atmosphere around him like a little tornado, you know, because he went around doing things that made dust fly." "
By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) SEPT 15 | In the wake of national news coverage regarding the suicide of 15 year old Billy Lucas in rural Greensburg, Indiana last week as a result of bullying he was subjected to in his high school, the following statements were released by the heads of The Human Rights Campaign and Trevor's Project.
From HRC president Joe Solmonese:
"Our condolences go out to Billy Lucas’ family at this sad time. Billy's suicide was a tragedy and the bullying that preceded his death is inexcusable. A similar fate for other teens can be prevented. All students deserve to be treated with dignity and respect which is why HRC urges school districts and state legislatures everywhere to implement enumerated anti-bullying policies and laws that that protect all students."
Charles Robbins, Executive Director for the Trevor Project, released a statement regarding Billy's death which reads:
"We are saddened to once again hear of another young person who died of suicide as a result of school bullying. Billy Lucas, a 15-year-old at Greensburg High School stood out among the 630 students in the school because he was different. Other students perceived that Billy was gay and he was relentlessly tormented as a result.
While the school district does have anti-harassment and anti-bullying policies, the policies do not specifically protect youth from harassment due to real or perceived sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression. Only eleven states in the country offer fully inclusive anti-harassment and anti-bullying education policies, and Indiana is not among them.
Currently, there is no national standard to protect all of our children from bullying and harassment at school. Yet, we know that as many as 1 in 10 sexual minority youth have been physically assaulted at school, and that when youth are threatened or get into fights, or have property stolen at school, their risk of attempting suicide more than doubles. That is why The Trevor Project supports fully inclusive federal legislation, like the Safe Schools Improvement Act currently under consideration in the Senate, to offer the protections all of our children need from torment and ridicule at school, regardless of their real or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.
Only with an enforceable national standard that offers resources and support to educators and staff, no matter the size of a school district, will we be able to prevent future tragedies like Greensburg High School has experienced. The death of Billy Lucas is a tragedy, and one that might have been prevented if his school district had the support of a fully inclusive anti-harassment and anti-bullying law."
Location: Canada
Registered: December 2003
Messages: 869
... coming as it does, and spoken, from the mouth of a supposedly educated man.
Bullying is terrorism, granted on a much smaller scale that more worldly assignments of that terminology; and indoctrination is in of itself by it's very nature (theological and otherwise) a form of bullying; all should be dealt with swiftly, and decisively, with no prisoners taken.
How any rational human being, let alone one charged with the care and responsibility for that care, of children place in his trust, could make any such assertion is beyond understanding; it is criminal.
I've not commented here in this thread before this, as I abhor topics such as this one, and find them most difficult to get my head around. The pain and anguish we as humans are capable of inflicting upon one another never astounds me, nor am I ever surprised by it; not anymore; still an all, I feel it deeply; often to deeply to ever likely be coherent about it.
Warren C. E. Austin
The Gay Deceiver
Toronto, Canada
I was bullied and in turn I became something of a bully. I remember one boy got a brand new wooden ruler of mine and banged it against his desk leaving big gouges in it so it no longer had a straight edge. One time I teased a girl to the point where she grabbed my hair and wouldn't let go until I hit her.
I'd be reluctant to lay the majority of the blame at the feet of the principal, however. Even this one.
Every school has bullying, your original post seems to imply that there would be one that didn't, timmy. If there is a bully-free school point it to me, but I'm sure it doesn't exist.
Principals can do some things to mitigate bullying, but not much. This principals wasn't aware that THIS kid was bullied. I doubt my principal knew I bullied or was bullied. I don't think in my school of 600 he even knew I existed (year co-ordinators did).
Also parent committees can be particularly meddlesome and strong-arm tactics by parents stop the principals from being able to do much.
Part of this is just teenagers being douchey little teenagers, too. And it can be hard to know when it's going to have this kind of outcome. If every kid that called another kid "fag" or "gay" was suspended you'd have much, much smaller schools and it's doubtful many would learn their lesson. You could hold school-wise assemblies and have the kids ignore and not care.
I don't know what you can expect a principal to do in this situation. He could probably have done more, but I doubt much more.
I blame the parents and I blame the bullies. Teenagers should be held responsible for their actions. And parents (of the bullies, mostly, but to a degree of the boy) need to ensure that their kids aren't little arseholes and also that they know what is going on in their kids' lives.
If my experiences with bullying 10-15 years ago are anything to go by, anyway...
Look at this tree. I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time [...] No matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.
Master Oogway
Location: Adelaide, South Australia
Registered: September 2010
Messages: 127
Warren, contrary to your contention of not getting your head around the topic, I think you have expressed clarity of understanding the problem and its effect and causes, and you have done so eloquently.
DesDownunder
Call me naive if you want, but life without trust in the goodness of others would be intolerable.
Religious indoctrination: It gets better, without it.
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
The Principal provides the environment and is responsible for it. All of it.
The school was obviously insufficiently well managed. The instances of bullying were not isolated. They were continual, if you read the reports. And the principal knew this child was being bullied though he sometimes says not.
I was a bullied kid turned bully, too. But that was isolated. Isolated bullying is hard to spot, easy to handle. Systematic bullying is easy to spot, hard to handle. He was not handling it.
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
I have been following the Billy Lucas Memorial page on Facebook. People have been placing disgusting photographs and messages on it. I find it hard to understand my fellow alleged human beings some days.
But, because Billy was mixed race, it is obviously just fine for these morons to do this. Some seem to get off on the reaction they cause.
The most disgusting thing is that Facebook itself is so huge that it is out of control. It seems impossible for the corporation to monitor this crap
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
It gave them something else to taunt him with. That is the sole importance of his racial... status.
When we are beset on all sides the only thing we believe to be under our control is whether we live. At 15 things seem enormous, things that, at even 16 we realise are just difficult hurdles to overcome.
It does make me wonder about the kids that took guns to school and killed, allegedly indiscriminately, other pupils and staff. I recently watched Full Metal Jacket for the first time. The early scenes are highly relevant to situations like this.
On his Facebook Memorial Page people put appalling pictures, described his death as not being a loss, and called him a nigger. Someone put up some questions about the chain he (may have) used to hang himself. They were not questions. They were more bullying, even after he was dead. And they have also tried to bully Jade Sansing, the person behind the page.
But he was half caste and probably queer anyway, so he didn't matter.
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
You know I've been following this story and am more than somewhat disgusted with the whole thing. http://tinyurl.com/2w8lokj expresses more of my feelings, this time in a more public forum than here.
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Brody's Scribbles... The Very Real Cost Of Homophobia 
Re: Brody's Scribbles... The Very Real Cost Of Homophobia 
Re: It's fine. He was probably queer anyway 
Re: It's fine. He was probably queer anyway 
Re: I simply cannot believe that I'm reading such drivel ... 