Some Thoughts on School Bullies

The Rapid City Journal has had several articles about the problem of bullying in our schools. Kota Television did a story on Cyber Bullying last night as well. The LGBT community has too much first hand experience with this problem. All too often those who are or are perceived to be different are the ones targeted for bullying.

I have personally been involved in trying to resolve situations in which someone was being bullied in school because others thought they were gay. We attempted to get the attention of the school administration but did not have any positive results from those attempts. The problems only got worse.

One situation was several years ago at Central High School. A student was ridiculed by a staff member and forced to drop out. A more recent incident occurred at Southwest Middle School in which a student was continually singled out for harassment and physical abuse because some students decided he was gay. Attempts to get the school to resolve the situation resulted in the administration blaming the victim and refusing to get involved. They did everything wrong in trying to resolve the situation. The parents finally removed him from school and placed him in another school where he did well. The bullying stopped. Interestingly the same Principle was involved in both situations and is now at the center of this most recent incident as quoted in the above stories. When will this administration figure out the problem?

In the above incidents I cited, the students were fortunate to have parents who understood and accepted their kids. Those parents went to the aid of the kids and helped them to get through it. Without any help from the schools. Too many kids don't have that.

For too many kids if they are gay or are being accused of being gay, they would be afraid to ask their parents for help out of fear of losing the love of their families. Homophobia kills! They certainly don't want the school to call their parents. So they don't report it to the school authorities either. They just suffer and try to endure it. All too often the teachers and school staff look the other way for fear of retaliation by religious fanatics who think harassing gay people is a good thing.

The efforts by the staff at North Middle School and other schools in the area to protect kids and to stop the bullying is to be applauded and encouraged. Staff who are indifferent or are part of the problem should be disciplined and/or removed. All kids deserve to be in a safe environment where they can learn no matter who they are.

In conversations with school counsellors I have been told that in well over 60% of all suicide attempts with which they had dealt some issues of sexual orientation or gender identity were involved. Getting rid of the negative attitudes toward sexual orientation and gender identity would go a long way to resolving the problem. First we need to start with the school administration and staff.