I’m taking a one-post-break from writing about strangers. There’s been an issue in the news that has gripped my attention, has been at the forefront of my mind, and has been making me sad for a long enough time now that I think it has earned a post on Talking to Strangers.

On January 14, 2010, a 15 year old girl named Phoebe Prince committed suicide in her South Hadley, Massachusetts home. Her body was discovered by her 12 year old sister, which is horrific tragedy of its own, but the thing that is suspected to have pushed her to the edge was bullying. What type of bullying she actually experienced is not entirely clear – but, I’m going to give this girl benefit of the doubt that whatever it was she was going through was enough to push anyone into a dark, sad place.

Here’s what I do know. She and her family moved to the US from Ireland at some point in 2009, making her, “the new girl.” Though I only spent 3 days in Ireland myself, I was pulled aside and questioned by security for taking off my shoes in front of an airport metal detector – so I’m going to fancy a guess that the culture shock this girl was acclimating herself to made being 15 and starting high school significantly more confusing and scary than it is for us non-foreigners. All kids experience bullying to some degree, though unless they get uprooted and moved 3,000 miles during adolescence, not all kids go through the type of “new kid” bullying that comes from being just that - new.

A lot of the news stories that are providing real details of the situation are describing that she experienced things such as being forced to sit alone during lunch and not being invited to do anything after school or on weekends. The memories of spending a solid year eating lunch by myself in middle school is what tugged my heartstring enough to make me sit down and write this – but eating alone and being bored on Saturday aren’t enough to make a kid snap. But, as 9 students from Prince’s school have been charged as adults with a battery of felonies including statutory rape, criminal harassment, stalking, and “violations of civil rights,” it’s pretty clear that this 15 year old girl was subject to a lot more than being ignored.

I’m making a point here to not go into, “Where were the adults? Where were the teachers? Why didn’t anyone say anything?” because every newsman and blogger who has covered this story has already filled their graphs with those questions. They’re valid – but they’re not what I’ve been thinking about for the past three days.

My question is this – what message is being sent to children that causes them to silently let tears run down their faces while they let other kids bully them so severely that they see suicide as being their only option? I don’t need to ask where the teachers were – the answer is simple: they were elsewhere. I want to find out where this message of passivity is coming from, because I think that this is just as much a part of the problem as is the fact that teachers are clearly turning a blind eye to this kind of abuse.

My family moved to Arizona when I was 12, I was the new kid, and I got picked on a lot. I can’t say with a clean conscience, “my teachers ignored it!” because a few of them really stepped up to the plate and defended the new kids and the losers like me – but plenty of the others saw what was real and never said a word. In a report issued today by the superintendent of South Hadley High School, Gus Sayer, a handful of teachers and administrators have come forward and admitted that they knew what was happening to Prince, and did nothing. It has also come to light that Prince’s mother had met with two school officials to express her concerns, which were also ignored.

Prince was clearly doing what she could to ask for help – and her requests were going unanswered. And when her request for help were unanswered, she was left with nothing but herself. What concerns me so much about this is that kids are demonstrating that they have been sent a message that when you’re left alone with all of your problems, there is nothing more you can do.

When I was bullied in middle school, I tattled for a while – which made things worse. I tried to stay quiet and avoid conflict for a while – which accomplished very little except drawing much more spirited provocations. And then one day, a kid whose name I remember but will not mention came up to me during lunch. I was eating a slice of pizza and reading a book by myself at an empty table. When the kid came up to me, he grabbed the book out of my hands, and said “I’ll be taking this, fag,” and began to walk away. There was a teacher nearby who watched this happen – but didn’t move from where she was sitting. I though about tattling, and wanted to cry – but what I did was much more direct. I stood up, made my way up to the escaping bully who had given me plenty of grief in the past – and I punched him in the back of the head. He fell to the ground, I picked up my book, kicked him once in the chest, and went back to my table and my slice of pizza.

Not only did that particular kid never give me so much as a dirty look again, none of his friends did, either. None of his friends gave me any grief, and the other bullies who saw it happen or heard about it later regarded me with a new level of respect. Some continued verbally harassing me, but never pushed me in the hallway again. Others who had never bothered me before wanted to prove how tough they were by intimidating me, and I threw punches where punches were due. Fountain Hills Middle School was so efficient at turning a blind eye to this kind of violence that I only ever received one 15-minute detention for getting into a fight, which I told my parents was due to being late for a class. If I walked into room with a black eye and a known bully walked in behind me with a bleeding lip – the teachers would make eye contact with all of the other students for the remainder of the class. By the time I got to 8th grade, I had changed things for myself. Not only was bullying no longer a problem I faced, but I no longer had to spend time worrying about bullying and could devote some of this newly freed time to finding kids I actually wanted to hang out with.

I can only wish that this poor girl had had the idea, or the encouragement, or the cautious whisper of a brave adult, telling her, “go pick up a rock and knock that fucking bully’s teeth out, Phoebe.”

In our “post-Columbine” era – we’re so focused on preaching nonviolence that the only people who now have access to it are the malintentioned trolls who know that even if they can’t get a knife past the school’s metal detector, a fist can get through fine. Expulsions and lawsuits are so common that well behaved, smart kids are left with no way to defend themselves from criminal harassment and rape without fear of being denied entry to college, or fear that punitive damages will bankrupt their parents. Kid are standing idly as victims of violence because this “violence is never the answer” mantra painted on the guns of the school security guards are making them believe that it’s better to be beaten or raped then to risk a lawsuit or a stint in juvi in the name of taking matters into their own hands and defending themselves.

Unfortunately, it’s tough to teach angry, scared, and hormonal kids that an appropriate level of violence might very well be the answer without being seen as inciting a future school shooting. But, there was a day when school shootings didn’t exist, where lawsuits weren’t commonplace and fights happened. If we let our pets growl at each other when they try to eat from the wrong bowl, why is it so unacceptable to let a fist fly and a nose bleed when honor and integrity are on the line. I realize, we’re “not animals” and “shouldn’t act like them” – but if all we have to give our sons and daughters to protect themselves is D.A.R.E. class and rape whistles, then maybe it is time to step back from this pacifist approach to school yard bullying and encourage our youngsters to learn to defend themselves and take from the thieves what is rightfully theirs.