Kids take bully pulpit
NJ students cry for help at school meet
Fellow students of the 14year-old New Jersey girl who was bullied into taking her own life earlier this month slammed school officials for not doing more to prevent the tragedy during a packed, and sometimes heated, Thursday night school board meeting.
The students were joined by hundreds of parents and community members who attended Central Regional School District’s first board meeting since Adriana Kuch took her own life on Feb. 3.
“[Adriana] already reported numerous reports about how she was being bullied, and you guys just sat there and did nothing,” one of her friends, Hailie Engesser, told the board in the auditorium of the Ocean County, NJ, high school.
“It’s actually really, really hard to be going to school because of all the bullying and everything that’s been going on. But it’s the fact that you didn’t notify the police about that or about Adriana. She was on the floor blacked out . . . You guys could have prevented that.”
Engesser and other students shared their own heart-wrenching accounts of the times they say they were bullied as students in the district.
Roman Velez, a 16-year-old sophomore, said he’s been desensitized to all of the racist comments thrown his way at school.
“I have been called multiple racist things, multiple slurs, to the point where if I hear [them], I don’t bat an eye. I’m used to it,” he said.
“When people ask me what my experience at Central Regional
is, it’s not, ‘I went to CR.’ It’s ‘I survived CR,’ because coming to the school, it’s like being in a prison,” Velez added.
Junior Milo Luga said she’s been bullied “every day” since seventh grade because she is gay, and revealed that bullies had posted photos of her on social media.
“I’ve been to mental hospitals, and I’ve been suicidal, and I’ve self-harmed in the past because of what happened to me in the school,” she said.
As soon as the meeting began, the rowdy crowd began shouting at the board as they moved through regular business.
“We don’t care about your agenda, we want to get to what we’re all here for!” one woman screamed.
Board President Denise Wilson threatened to shut down the meeting as she conducted a vote to appoint new superintendent Douglas Corbett to replace former superintendent Triantafillos Parlapanides, who resigned on Saturday.
“If you can’t take the heat you shouldn’t be on the board!” cried one spectator as Wilson begged the audience to let them get through the vote.
Kuch died two days after she was beaten by four other students in a school hallway. The bullying continued after the attack as video of it spread on social media, the teen’s family has said.
Four New Jersey teenage girls were charged with the beating. Their names have not been released due to their age.