Death points to alarming toxic school climates

During my seventh-grade year in school, I was the target of a bully.

I was small for my age. I wore glasses.

I was new to the school again.

My siblings and I attended the school three years earlier, but my dad was transferred to another part of Ohio and we lived there for three years. He was transferred back to our hometown, and I figured I would just pick up where I left off before we moved.

My bully had other plans for me. I will spare you the details, but the culminating

This guest column event was fight in the hallway. may contain details I was pummeled pretty that are disturbing. good, but I landed a lucky

If you or someone shot to his nose, causing a

you know is having nosebleed.

thoughts of Sitting outside the office,

suicide, please waiting on the principal, I

contact the tried to apologize. My bully

National Suicide said he was going to kill me. I

Prevention Lifeline believed him. The principal

at 988. did everything wrong when

it comes to dealing with school bullies, but that was the last time I was ever picked on by him.

That took place over 50 years ago.

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was lucky. I had friends. A great set of parents. Brothers and sisters. Aunts, uncles, and cousins. I never once thought about suicide, but I remember how what was happening to me consumed that part of my life.

‘Maybe my story would not have had a happy ending.’

I thought about that time in my life when I read about the tragedy of 14-year-old New Jersey student Adriana Kuch. A recording of a recent attack on her by four teens was spread around social media and lead to online bullying and hateful comments. Her family says she died of suicide just days later.

“It happened because these two haven’t liked each other for a couple years, and she had been threatening my daughter online,” Michael Kuch, Adriana’s father, said in an interview with WNBCTV.

There is no sliding scale for a parent or a community’s pain, but for as heartbreaking as it is for a killer to enter a school and kill innocent children, for me the death of a child by their own hand because of treatment from the peers is gut-wrenching.

I was lucky because my bully could only torment me while I was at school. He tried calling a couple of times to harass me, but I had five sisters and two brothers who could screen my calls.

Maybe my story would not have had a happy ending if it happened today with technology and social media creating a barrage of harassment 24/7.

Over three billion dollars has been spent on school safety and security annually. Metal detectors, cameras, software, hardware, security personnel and school resource officers.

Suicide of the third leading cause of death among those ages 15 to 19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A newly released report from the agency found that teen girls are experiencing record high levels of sadness, suicidal risk and violence. Teens who identified as LGBQ+ are also under high emotional distress, according to the data collected in 2021. More than half experienced poor mental health.

The CDC’S Youth Risk Behavior Survey found:

● 30% of girls seriously considered attempting suicide, a nearly 60% increase from 10 years before.

● 57% of high school girls felt persistently hopeless or sadness, also a nearly 60% increase. About 30% of teen boys reported those same feelings over that same time period.

● One in five girls experienced sexual violence that past year — a 20% increase over 2017 when the CDC started monitoring that measure.