Susan was a great friend of mine. We would walk to school together and have sleepovers every couple days. It wasn’t until she died that I realized I was her only friend. We were in the lunch room one winter day right before winter break. We sat at our usual table with the same cliques around us, basically a normal day. But in fact it wasn’t normal, Susan was almost non-existent. She didn’t talk at all and I wanted to know why. She was so talkative any other day, but something happened that made her think differently about what she said to me and what she didn’t. When we were walking home I asked her one question and that started the stream of tears to roll down her face. I asked her what was wrong, and she told me that a girl in our literature class had come up to her locker and told her that if she didn’t take off the ugly scarf from her head- Susan was Muslim fyi- she would take it off for her. But the girl knew it was against her religion to take it off in public, but she didn’t care. The girl walked up behind her as Susan was walking away and pulled the scarf down in front of everyone. She was crying for help, but all the other Muslims in the school were either running in the opposite direction, afraid they would be the next victim, or spitting on her and shaming her entire family. That was what sent it off. She was embarrassed to go to school because Susan was shamed, and she didn’t want to go back with that girl still lurking in the halls. Susan was very upset, and when she finally came back to school after 3 weeks, the girl beat her senseless and called her horrible names. By the end of that week, Susan would have taken her life by suffocation. But do you think that the school would do anything about it? No. The school said that if Susan wanted the issue to stop, she would have come forward and asked for the torture to stop. But how could she if she would be beaten up before Susan could even walk through the principal’s office?!? It took her father, a lawyer, to finally bring the school to justice, but the judge claimed that the child abusing Susan was a trouble child and sentenced a 3 day suspension and 18 hours of community service.

How on Earth can a child kill herself and the person that tormented her for a week be punished by a suspension and volunteering? A girl’s life was taken because of the mean things that happened to her. It may be that victim’s responsibility to stand up for themselves, but what if they don’t have that option? What if the victim is scared that they will die if they tell or tortured until there is no other solution? What then?!? A bully has a huge impact on someone and schools and community leaders need to go out of their way to find out if something is going on, not the other way around.