When bullying becomes dangerous

One of my childhood friends called me a few days ago. I was out, so I asked if I could call her back. She said yes. Later that night, when I got home, I checked my Facebook (as I usually do) and saw that she sent me a message. Her message included a link to news of a court case. From the first couple of lines, I knew it was about a dear friend of hers who committed suicide four years ago. Apparently, the boy was tormented by bullies to the extreme. While teachers had witnessed the event, my friend said that they would simply ask the bullies to calm down. The bullies were respected athletes and the teachers apparently cared more for their reputation than the boy's right to feel safe in a learning environment. Unfortunately, the judge declared that the school had no "special relationship" with the students and that they did not have responsibility in the death of this particular student. In response, my friend has written a petition to the U.S. Secretary of Education, stating a need to clarify teachers' roles in demanding accountability for bullies and making students feel safe. Here is the link to the petition as well as the link to the court case.

This all occurred in my friend's hometown, which unfortunately has a reputation for teen suicides. The reasons for these suicides involve excessive bullying. While I don't know all of the details for each individual student, it seems that there is an extreme lack of oversight into students' interactions. My friend is the daughter of a teacher (one who taught in that area) and is studying to become a teacher herself. Through her studies and her discussions with her mother, she has found that teachers must serve as "first responders" to crisis. While the teachers themselves may not have control of what students do at home, they do have the ability to intervene when a student faces intimidation or harassment. Through this, they have the ability to foster a respectful classroom community. As my friend witnessed, they did not. Due to teachers' authority and responsibility, it is natural that she finds this criminal.

I am asking all of you to please sign my friend's petition. In the U.S., it's obligatory to educate our children, usually by having them attend school 180 days of the year. As such, we expect that our children be safe and that our teachers diffuse any hint of a bad situation. More importantly, we are often taught that education is the great equalizer, the key to allowing others to follow their dreams. Those dreams are in vain if we are simply left with dead children.

An A- is "Substandard" in my School.........

OK, I always knew SIS used grade inflation. How else can you explain the amount of students who graduate Summa cum laude or Magna cum laude? Granted, many students I know who enter SIS are usually overachievers anyway, but still. On top of that, I am almost always amazed by the complaints I hear about professors. "She gave me a 94 instead of a 95!" (overheard in Ward). "My GPA COULD be a 4.0 if only my professor was fair!" "My professor makes it IMPOSSIBLE to get an A!" It is easy to dismiss these as students with egos bigger than their work ethic and a severe misunderstanding of their problems as compared to their studies (usually involving poverty, war, environmental degradation and security threats). However, you know it's worse when you hear your professors say the following about a short assignment, "If I gave you an A-, it was because the work was substandard and, if you really didn't get it, I gave you a B."

I almost died.

I'll admit, I love getting A's and I will work for them. I want to graduate with a stellar GPA too (also to make up for my premed burnout three years ago). I want to get into those awesome grad programs as well. But I grew up with the understanding that A is for "awesome" and an A or A- was reserved for work that was truly excellent. You didn't get an A because you did what your teacher or professor told you to do. You got one because you went above and beyond what they asked you to do. One of my professors actually has a great quote about this, "If you do everything I ask you to do, you will receive a B, a perfectly fine grade for perfectly fine work," and goes on to say that A's are for those who take it further. That's what I always believed. A's are awesome, B's are good, C's are OK, D's are dangerous and F is failing. Apparently, A's are now good and everything else might as well be failing.

I can understand if my professors thought, "Oh, it was the first assignment and most of the work was actually good," but it still bothers me. Have we become a generation so entitled, so forceful, so convinced that we are deserving of all good things that now people are afraid to give us consequences? Have we become like the auto industry, that is, too big to fail? Have we lost our work ethic so much that we have to get the highest marks for merely doing what we're told? Have we lost a sense of responsibility for our actions or lack thereof?

Finally, if we're all graduating with degrees in IR and plans to go into politics, law, economics and other positions of relative power, what does this mean for the world we are serving? Are we going to shirk responsibilities and only do the bare minimum when it comes to the environment or reducing poverty? Will we still expect our gold stars then? If the answer to these is yes, I am truly frightened, not only for my school but for my generation.