Dear Knights,

I walk into one of the North Penn bathrooms and as I go to reach for the toilet paper, I see many things scribbled on the stall walls and doors.

“BC + JP = TOGETHER FOREVER” “JAKE IS SO HOT” “CLASS OF 2012 BABY” and many others. As I read other messages, one really stands out to me, “ANNA IS A SLUT.”

This offense against “Anna” was most likely not the first time she was called mean words. She might have been bullied all her life, but no one knew she was being bullied until they saw her name on the bathroom stall.

Like Twitter or any social media outlet, once it’s out there, it’s out there and can never come back.

Someone tried to scratch out that comment. There were X marks across “Anna’s” name, but unfortunately, it still looms over the stall. Whether this comment was written last week or five years ago, poor Anna was being bullied and now every girl who goes into the A Pod bathroom will know that too.

Anna was probably a nice girl, someone who just lived her life and didn’t care what others thought about her.

Sounds like most students who get bullied today.

It only took one person to write that comment on the bathroom stall and it only takes one person to be a bully. One person to start a rumor. One person to make jokes about someone. One person to point and laugh. One person to ruin someone’s life.

High school students have the power to make a classmate’s life fun and enjoyable, but we also have the power to make someone want to never come to school again.

If you don’t dress like the popular kids, or listen to the same music or make fun of the same people they make fun of, you’re not cool. It’s the same in every school and has been that way forever. It’s inevitable. But that doesn’t mean it should still be around in schools today.

Schools try to help eliminate bullying by bringing in speakers who have lost a child due to bullying or had the entire school participate in bullying awareness activities. It doesn’t work though. Because if it did work, there wouldn’t be any bullies, there wouldn’t be any mean comments on the bathroom stalls and people would stop caring about what other people think.

I wish there was a clear definitive way to end bullying and to stop people from caring so much about what other people think, but there isn’t. Hopefully one day as a society we can reach a point where bullying will end. Until then.

Sincerely,

Siena