Columns

An open letter to our schools’ bullies, past and present

Dear bullies,

Yeah, you, looking in the mirror, trying to believe how handsome or beautiful, how intelligent or witty, how courageous or cool you are—all the while feeling inferior, smaller, less everything than everyone else.

You, who judge your peers by standards and expectations you’ve been led to believe are the only ones that matter because they’re all you’ve ever heard your family spout.

You, who need constant affirmation and attention and get it by trying to make other kids feel less than you.

You, who don’t see individuals, don’t get to know or want to know anyone with a different skin color, gender identity, language, dialect, religion, height, weight, or video preferences.

You, whose parents do not condemn your habitual name-calling, back-pushing, de-pantsing, race-baiting, hate-mongering and gender-slandering, but rather allow, deny, dismiss, or encourage them.

You, who after physically assaulting a boy in Geneva Middle School in the 1980s, surely delighted in hearing that the principal pulled the kid you bullied out of class and told HIM to “grow up,” not you.

You, who set out to degrade my own children in the early 2000s, my son physically and emotionally, my daughter a mean girls’ target, crushing me and my wife as well, because we felt the hand slap’s sting and the frozen isolation with the same intense heat and cold.

You, who in 2010, bullied a Geneva student about his sexual orientation, after which he took his own life.

You, thriving on the lack of diversity in Geneva schools, probably don’t understand or care about systemic racism, implicit bias, or the true meaning of “prejudice” (not hate, but ignorance).

You, who most likely have enjoyed a life of white privilege probably take it for granted—if you even know what it is.

You, who uses racial slurs to demean, stereotype and humiliate a boy or girl who takes the same school bus and makes mistakes just like you do on algebra quizzes.

You, who think “Black Lives Matter” is a threat, not a plea for individual recognition; a rant, not a petition for fair treatment; a warning, not an appeal for enlightened respect.

You, when you took a fellow fifth-grader’s textbook that he needed to complete an assignment, must have loved hearing your mother, on the phone with the bullied boy’s mother, tell the kid’s mom if she wanted the book back she’d have to come over to your house to get it—then let you off the hook, with no show of remorse or apology, and by not handing back the book yourself.

You, who scoff at schools’ attempts to teach students that bullying and racism are unacceptable; chuckle at clawless consequences for bullies who persist; mock students, faculty, administrators and staff when directed to identify and report bullies.

You, who think humiliation and derision are better than love, need love more than we do.

Sincerely yours,

A parent, one of millions, of bullied children

P.S. Grow up.