"Other students, including some of the bullies, wore nooses around their necks after they learned of his death, to school, and got away with it," That’s what Lee Hirsch had to say, about a young victim of bullying, who ended his life miserably under the increasing pressure of being continually browbeaten by his classmates. Hirsch is a documentary filmmaker who has spent decent amount of time observing, examining and recording the innumerable cases of bullying that disturbs the United States.
Tyler Long was in his junior year of high school. It was only his second month. After years of alleged bullying at the hands of his classmates in the Murray County School District in Georgia, he had arrived at a breaking point where he felt he had had enough. On October 17th, 2009, it was one of those very normal mornings, when 17-year-old Tyler decided to change the course of his life journey and grabbed his favorite T-shirt and jeans. He strapped a belt around his neck and hanged himself from the top shelf in his bedroom closet. He was found by his father and younger brother but it was too late. They tried loosening the belt off his neck hoping to relive pressure, but the loop could come out only once the belt was cut off his neck with a knife after putting him to a timeless sleep. Tyler was a bright child, who had fallen prey to unfettered bullying and more shocking was the revelation that his untimely death was publicly lampooned in school by the bullies and other classmates. Tyler’s parents had filed a lawsuit against the school authority and their ignorance towards the repetitive issue of bullying that agonized their son and finally took away his life. But the school chose to remain silent probably for the sake of saving their prestigious name from getting tarnished.
Bullying has become rampant in American schools. We keep reading, hearing and discussing about someone or the other getting bullied to death every day. But we rarely ponder upon the cathartic impact and its vastness that the victims and their families often have to deal with. There is so much pain and suffering associated with each of these incidents, affecting individuals, the lives of their loved ones, communities and our society by and large. Surveys have disclosed that each day more than 160,000 children in America stay at home refusing to go to school because even the thought of being bullied torments them. 64% kids resort to silence and do not complain of what happens to them, and these are the vulnerable souls who are 2 to 9 times more likely to contemplate suicide than students who have not been bullied. The rest of the 36% children are heard of reporting against bullying and that’s not the darkest side of this sinister matter in question. Several instances like that of Tyler go unnoticed, buried in the darkness of time, and the investigations that take place later aren’t of much help.
With the scenario of American schools, and with students’ suicidal ratio shooting up by leaps and bounds, there is currently, a national outcry to break the silence around this perennial problem of bullying and suicide. Fat. Gay. Dark. Stammerer. Or simply different from the crowd. These are the most common causes why children are bullied and their horror stories have spiraled the bullying epidemic up into the glare of publicity. The primary psychology behind an intent to harass someone impels from the resentment and refusal to accept. Non acceptance of the ‘other’ is, and how different he or she is from the rest, has got a lot to do with the predilection to bully the weak. Once that ‘difference’ is identified as a prominent weakness in the individual, it is very easy for someone who inflicts the bullying tactics to attack the target. More often than not, the victim’s surrounding, if not quite favorable and his nature granted as susceptible to suffering, lands him out of the frying pan into the fire. There was a time when children were expected to endure and not raise their voice against this heinous and despicable act of bullying. Ever since then, there has been no singular federal law that specifically applies to bullying. In some cases, when bullying is based on race, color, national origin, religion, sexual preference, or some sort of disability, it is adjudged to be harassment and schools are legally obligated to address it.
As a matter of fact, when we look at a person, it takes us seconds to reach a conclusion about his personality. Without even being familiar with which path that individual has taken, what kind of challenges he might have overcome, we tend to bring in a judgmental analysis. Our perception most essentially corresponds to a set of preconceived notions that we love to live by. Notions about one’s body type, sexual orientation, and also behavioral manners. Long back we did not have concepts like a body image, but now, we do have one. United States is a nation that is largely fighting an irrepressible battle against obesity. Children grow up shying away from their self-image which resultantly damages their self-esteem. We talk about a fat girl and how often her schoolmates deride her for those flabs, but little do we hear of the struggle a skinny girl goes through in a country like India. As archaic as the temperament back in the homeland can get, I have personally heard from women complaining over their morale being snubbed because they do not appear physically well-endowed, and thus less appealing, which eventually makes the prospects of a good marriage for them razor-thin. Not only batch mates, school teachers and sports instructors, every elderly eye looks down on you for having that extra slender waistline. The tone behind ‘try to put on some weight so that clothes of your age fits you’ seems to be directed at you just as if you are not fed adequately at home. They will act in a manner that discerns being thin as an abominable crime and one is seldom spared from taunts and scorns such as ‘Watch out when you go out to the beach for fun, the waves might just blow you away to another shore’. Who will explain these pre-historic mindsets that there is no rule such as one must fit in to clothes according to one’s age, but it is clothes that must fit one as per one’s size and built. When we were small, we couldn’t even relate to terms like acne shaming. Ahh wait! What is that? Did we even know what it meant? We used to be happy in our own skin, and often that one bruise on the knees and grume on the elbow felt rewarding. We took it as something normal, something that we embraced naturally, and certainly not as a fragility of our adolescence that might force us to take some dire action. Bully existed even then, the only aspect that makes it different today is the victims’ attitude towards it.
The fact sheet shows that 83% of young people claim bullying leaves a tremendously negative impact on their confidence level. Those who have been subjected to severe cases of bullying are more prone to health hazards in their later years of life, and they are over six times more likely to develop wrong lifestyle and unhealthy habits of heavy drinking and chain smoking, and consequently get diagnosed with serious ailments. They find more difficulty in keeping up with the competition in their respective careers and often require treatment for psychiatric disorders. Many times it is too late for the victim and their families to realize the need for serious counselling and rehabilitation centers which is for the most part replaced with a dreadful resolution found in drugs and dopamine.
The greatest trial lies in front of parents and educators who grew up in an altogether different ambience and most certainly, they haven’t seen the ghastly face of bullying. We know of physical, emotional, and verbal attacks, now, cyber bullying has also spread to the web and social media along with sexual bullying into the bargain. These unfortunate events include harassment related to gender and sexual orientation, and they imply intimidating gestures and threatening messages, concocted with contents predominantly sexual and potentially scandalous in nature, in addition to various other cruel and extortive hoaxes as an attack on the victim. 7 in 10 young people aged between 13 and 22 have been a victim of cyberbullying and what makes it worse is the massive mental trauma one has to put up with in homophobic bullying. The latter is surely emblematic of something ominous as it involves language and treatment that makes the victim feel marginalized and outcast owing to his or her perceived or actual sexual orientation. Researches prove that 96% of homosexual pupils hear homophobic remarks such as ‘poof’ or ‘lezza’ used in school. Almost all 99% hear phrases such as ‘that’s so gay’, which in obvious effects leads two out of five gay or lesbian kids who experience homophobic bullying to attempt suicide and duly quit from this vicious circle. Before Tyler, who had Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism that his parents say left him with unique personality traits unpopular with his classmates, on October 7, 2003, it was a gentle, sweet, lanky 13-year-old boy Ryan, whose tragic tale of self-destruction breaks our heart. His death was caused by suicide, as a direct consequence of the extreme degree of ‘cyber bullycide’ (as they term it).
Tyler’s case was one of a kind, seesawing between good and evil on the grounds of his Asperger’s – it was none other than these virtues such as his sincerity and rule oriented bearing, that prompted him to frequently remind his classmates of the regulations they were violating. This irritated his classmates and they hurled back at him by taking away things from him, spitting in his tiffin box and calling him ‘gay, faggot’.
Ryan was another youngster caught in the cobweb of persistent humiliation, dejection and vacillation. As it happens, Ryan’s memories are symptomatic of millions of children like him, who have chosen to pass into oblivion, and we can’t help but ascribe their deterioration and gradual withdrawal from life to the excruciating pain of being bullied and feeling suicidal too. Ryan was an extremely sensitive and compassionate child. He was born to John and Kelly Halligan, in Poughkeepsie, NY, just a week before Christmas. During his former years, his affectionate way and amicable nature made everyone fall in love with him. As he grew up, he developed a wonderful sense of humor too. And when his parents moved into new neighborhoods twice during his early life, other kids were instantly drawn towards his warmth and affability. But unfortunately, there were difficulties with Ryan’s speech, and language development as he was to approach kindergarten years. He had to enroll with Hiawatha Elementary School in Essex Junction Vermont, for special education through the fourth grade. This helped him immensely to outgrowth the hesitancy and lack of confidence that kept him timid until the fifth grade. Soon he became aware that he won’t be needing special attention in studies, however, he was not as academically strong as most of his classmates. Middle school happened, and the thought of lagging behind began to affect him deeply. He was often hard on himself as he had to put in extra hours’ labor to complete his homework. He burnt the midnight oil in re-reading assignments over and over again so that he could comprehend the materials. He was noticed, and appreciated for his social intelligence time and again by his parents, who genuinely wanted to reduce his academic pressures and engage him in honing other skills where his strengths lay.
It was in the fifth grade that Ryan started to encounter the bullying issue. A certain kid and his friends started hectoring Ryan for his academic weaknesses and poor physical coordination. It all started with verbal bullying which did not involve any physical abuse, and thus he became a butt of jokes for many. His parents consulted a therapist to assist him in improving on his self-esteem that might have made it easier for him to turn a blind eye to the blusterous ways of his classmates. By the end of the year he seemed to be fine so things looked brighter.
Ryan’s middle school was Albert D. Lawton (ADL) in Essex Junction, Vermont with grades 6 through 8 in the same building, and quite expectedly, the experience was slightly uneasy for little Ryan with bigger looking 8h graders loitering though the corridor. The bullying problem resurfaced on and off during his first middle school year, but he was helped out by his parents to handle the meanness of certain kids, which they thought was pretty common for all. But the 7th grade made the situation even worse going up to an extent where his parents started facing significant amount of concern and had to sit though tearful sessions with him only to save him from break downs and a consistent melancholia. They thought this would bring some ray of hope for him while he was still struggling to perform moderately well in his academics and the burden of living up to a certain standard in the eyes of everyone was depleting his stamina. He had been bottling up a lot within him, and the recurrent bullying from the same kid and his friends were tearing him apart once again; so much that he refused to go to school and requested his parents for considering a home school. After ceaselessly sticking by his side and fostering faith in him, his parents wanted to ensure that he learned to stand up for himself and for that first and foremost, he had to come out of the shell and stop being submissive. Ryan’s trust in the school administration was least from the very start, so he hardly allowed his benevolent parents to address the issue to the principal. It so happened a couple of times on putting the matter across to the management, he was made to bite the bullet and the bullying multiplied tenfold. Ryan had to train himself to take his own custody and it was not feasible for both the working parents to play the role of his bodyguard round the clock. Ryan agreed to engage in kickboxing program and a pair of boxing gloves along with punching bag was all that he wanted for Christmas. For a little while, the dust had almost settled in and justice smelled sweet. Ryan could literally lash back at his opponents on being tyrannized. After all, he was a teenager by then. His extra-curricular activities involved swimming, camping, skateboarding, biking, snowboarding, playing computer games and instant messaging. Goes without saying, it also included a few good punches that he promised his dad to quickly requite only if it was initiated by his rival.
Ryan loved being on-line, staying connected with his friends, palling around post school and throughout the summer. But during the summer of 2003, a greater deal of time was spent on-line, mainly instant messaging. This was the genesis of cyber bullying that took place during the later months leading up to his suicide. The boy who kept bullying Ryan on and off since fifth grade gave into fag busting and started embarrassing Ryan by calling him gay and fabricated stories about his sexual orientation. They continued to poke fun at Ryan which subsequently interfered into Ryan’s personal life as well. Meanwhile, Ryan found his love interest in a girl from his school, which somewhat began to develop and he approached her. As the 8th grade school year started up again, Ryan approached his new girlfriend in person. He was certainly unarmed to get a handle on what was coming. In front of her friends he was told by the girl that he was nothing short of a loser and that she was simply fooling around with him. What about the personal stuff that Ryan shared with her? What about his emotional strings that were already attached? She went another step ahead and shared all of their private chats across the school only to scapegoat Ryan and for the fun of it. It was too much for Ryan, and his self-respect was crushed. He decided to turn up his toes and free himself from this infinite manacle of disgrace and degradation.
Every time a tragedy like this takes place, there is a catalyst that elicits a certain amount of negative force, which further invites biological or environmental factors triggering the amplitude of the existent element of self-sabotage. In Ryan’s case, he ended up responding to his ordeals in an extreme manner, which predominantly emanated from his mental illness. Sadly, we all have let our seniors bully us at some point in time of our lives, and we treat it as a road to adulthood, that is filled with milestones – good, bad and the ugly. But as parents, what we tend to neglect many times is the fact that we need to place an enormous accountability on ourselves in this context. Our children are an extension of us, genetically, spiritually, as a whole. But they aren’t necessarily our split image in their emotional and intellectual equilibrium, and in many other areas. Therefore, nobody else is responsible for how their minds are shaped or souls are nurtured. Like Ryan’s parents, there are many couples, who hardly pay any heed to the trials and tribulations that their kids face since pre-kindergarten. They try to convince and pacify their evil twin by telling - everything that happens with the child is a passing phase – an inevitable, irrefutable part of growing up. Having said that, we also can’t repudiate a certain amount of moral culpability that lies with the bullies, bystanders, and their parents along with the school’s administration and staff. Regardless of what form it takes, it's up to everyone to resist bullying. Recently, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services has taken the plunge into #StopBullying and #BeMoreThanABystander propaganda to put a check on this perpetual malady bursting forth far and wide.
Ultimately, I have not yet become a mother, but how can I say - it doesn’t, by and large affect me, as I can clearly envision the challenges that are lurking on the other side of parenthood? It is a huge responsibility to provide a child with a requisite healthy social environment that partly lies with the school authority beyond the comfort zone of home. In an era of technology and invention we can’t replace the utility of an IPad with our age old fondness for personal diaries neither can we lambaste the contemporary craze over on-line tools such as smart phones, IM, Hangout, Instagram, a plethora of microblogging sites and countless anonymous posting applications. It isn’t easy forcing the young blood to unlearn their mastery over these and adapt to handwritten notes or a “slam” book for that matter. The list keeps growing manifolds with each new gadget and design in demand. Thus advancement of scientific inventions doesn’t always turn out as one intends, and for Ryan, cyberbullying happened to be fatal. In recent years, a series of bullying-related suicides in the US and across the globe have been brought to light and there is a very strong connection found between bullying (which is not always the traditional ones, but also through social networking mediums) and suicides; nevertheless, there is still a section of the adult society that believes this to be just a part of being a kid. Statistics indicate, suicide is the third leading cause behind teen deaths, and there are such 4,400 deaths per year. 42% teenagers with access to technology have reported of cyberbullying and there are at least over 14% of high school pupils who have mulled over suicide, and almost 7% have attempted it. Bullying through technology has heightened the overall rate of cyber-crime too, which is probably one of the determining factors that has given substantial rise to the number of teen suicides.
Having witnessed turmoil of such magnitude marching the rounds, motherhood definitely seems to come with a heavy cost. Aren’t we luckier? Wasn’t life less complicated a generation ago? In our times, the hurts and humiliation had zero exposure to a far larger, online adolescent audience that kept our inner conflicts simpler, if not completely at bay – It was much easier to pit oneself against a lowering self-esteem, increasing depression and sense of powerlessness that stems from being bullied. Now, this has an absolutely deleterious influence on these teens and their feelings and reputation, as they are often seen adjusting their sail and acclimatizing in the midst of a rapid physical change together with a psychological ebb and flow. In all likelihood it happens on account of non-acceptance, retraction, and self-worthlessness.
It’s okay to dislike someone. It’ perfectly justified not to justify the root cause of that dislike. But it’s not very “cool” as put it, to demean and derogate someone. Does it really matter who you are, or how you look, or what you believe in? Should you have to hide the real you to be accepted all the time? Do you always need to maintain a meek, humble and kind disposition in order to acquire the society’s validation? And then perish in ignominy like Ryan? Like Tyler? Are we still left with some hope for our children? Will seeking some help and not losing hope encourage the bullies and bystanders to be more humane and speak up for the right cause? Can we hope, that we are still capable of inspiring the society to change and broaden its outlook for the sake of welcoming all sorts of dissimilarity, disparity and variation with open arms? What is the reason that our kids have been trying so hard to change themselves at the expense of their very own identity? Is it a protocol that we must teach them to strive and blend in with the crowd and at once swallow rejection for standing out against the others? Is it obligatory to alienate every high school boy with pink hair as gay? Is this the kind of justice we are offering them and the departed souls of Ryan and Tyler? In the end, will it matter if you are able to touch someone else’s life who is exactly your reverse in anatomy? Will a great education and the solidarity to stand together and work with all sorts of people who are very different from one another hold a soupcon of value? Will we ever get to see the dawning of a consciousness that says it’s not we, the unique individual who must fit to the society, but the latter, that should usher in vistas of freedom and comity to fit every tiny and delicate soul known to be special on earth?
If it’s all about hatred and putting each other down in the dump, nobody can rob an individual off his right to hate another individual. The moral preachers aren’t always around to stop you from standing on your soapbox and yelling that slogan of hatred out loud. But as the sheep of His pasture, it is indubitably not within one’s rights to transform that hatred into a law. Law that cuts each other down out of envy, insecurity, often because there is a sheer void within one, and sometimes for no reason at all. We identify such ruthless laws as laws of discrimination, and difference that divides people and creates anarchy across the entire mankind. And as the Good Shepherd celebrates life, in His eulogy let us all remember – “EVERYONE WHO HATES HIS BROTHER IS A MURDERER; AND YOU KNOW THAT NO MURDERER HAS ETERNAL LIFE ABIDING IN HIM.”
#StopBullying #CyberBullying #StopSuicides #Ryan #Tyler #Equality #SpreadLove
