(I recently wrote an editorial on bullying for the paper and thought I would post it here as well)
I want to applaud the students and teachers at Morden Collegiate for organizing Pink Shirt Day to take a stand against bullying.
For years I was bullied mercilessly on an almost daily basis throughout middle school and early high school and it affected pretty much every part of my life. My grades suffered and I lived in a state of perpetual fear. I hated the thought of going to school and took care to leave home as late as possible so as to arrive just as the bell rang leaving as little time as possible for my tormentors.
I remember loathing the journey home each afternoon as I sat in class trying to work out new routes home and new exits to escape the school unnoticed. I was bullied because I was a skinny dishevelled runt of a kid who wore used clothes from the Salvation Army and came from a poor family.
It’s been 30 years and the scars of bullying still run deep in my life. The impact of taunts and periodic beatings do not leave you…or if they do they have not left me yet.
In my time I have learned a few things. Intolerance of the kind I was subjected to and witnessed is learned and not inherent. Words hurt as much, and sometimes more than physical acts of aggression. A bullied person will often desire to kill themselves as a way out of the torment.
Thankfully those days are past for me but not for others. What a hopeful thing it would have been if we had a day against bullying when I was going through it – but we were not as courageous then as our students are now.
It takes courage to stand up and say no to violence and bullying and as much boldness to make the commitment to stop bullying others. It takes strength to stand up against the kind of ignorance that calls an entire group of people lazy and blames their race, gender, socio-economic situation or sexual orientation for the oppressed situation many of them find themselves in. It takes compassionate resolve to look a person in the eye after another stupid insensitive joke and say “it’s not funny, it’s hurtful”.
Sometimes it is difficult to take this stand. There will be times when loud voices will call to us and say that we would be foolish to support an initiative that defends the rights and inherent dignity of others. After all we may be perceived as somehow being “one of them”. Still there are times when we may be called to sacrifice for such stands.
There are times when we are being called to lose if we are to gain and standing up against bullying when you are a high school student, teacher or administrator may be one of those times…but as I have said before it takes courage, compassion, a supreme amount of character and a willingness to sacrifice your own reputation and possibly position in the process.
In short – it is not easy; but who said doing the right thing was ever going to be easy?
Harnessing Chaos 