Good one!
Posted on 09/14/2007 12:25:48 PM PDT by Daffynition
CAMBRIDGE — Two students at Central Kings Rural High School fought back against bullying recently, unleashing a sea of pink after a new student was harassed and threatened when he showed up wearing a pink shirt.
The Grade 9 student arrived for the first day of school last Wednesday and was set upon by a group of six to 10 older students who mocked him, called him a homosexual for wearing pink and threatened to beat him up.
The next day, Grade 12 students David Shepherd and Travis Price decided something had to be done about bullying.
"It’s my last year. I’ve stood around too long and I wanted to do something," said David.
They used the Internet to encourage people to wear pink and bought 75 pink tank tops for male students to wear. They handed out the shirts in the lobby before class last Friday — even the bullied student had one.
"I made sure there was a shirt for him," David said.
They also brought a pink basketball to school as well as pink material for headbands and arm bands. David and Travis figure about half the school’s 830 students wore pink.
It was hard to miss the mass of students in pink milling about in the lobby, especially for the group that had harassed the new Grade 9 student.
"The bullies got angry," said Travis. "One guy was throwing chairs (in the cafeteria). We’re glad we got the response we wanted."
David said one of the bullies angrily asked him whether he knew pink on a male was a symbol of homosexuality.
He told the bully that didn’t matter to him and shouldn’t to anyone.
"Something like the colour of your shirt or pants, that’s ridiculous," he said.
"Our intention was to stand up for this kid so he doesn’t get picked on."
Travis said the bullies "keep giving us dirty looks, but we know we have the support of the whole student body.
"Kids don’t need this in their lives, worrying about what to wear to school. That should be the last thing on their minds."
When the bullied student put on his pink shirt Friday and saw all the other pink in the lobby, "he was all smiles. It was like a big weight had been lifted off is shoulder," David said. No one at the school would reveal the student’s name.
Travis said that growing up, he was often picked on for wearing store-brand clothes instead of designer duds.
The two friends said they didn’t take the action looking for publicity, but rather to show leadership in combating what they say is frequent bullying in schools.
Pink is the new pink.
It works for me.
That was happening to my youngest son in his jr year of high school. All of sudden he just got to be 6ft 2 and took on the bully of the school. I guess he had enough and he beat the cr@p out of him. I didn’t care he got suspended. Now his 3 older brothers don’t pick on him anymore either. He is bigger then all 3 of his brothers & they don’t want to mess with him anymore.
“Where was the Administration? (crickets)”
I was wondering about that too - at least when the kid said the bully, upon seeing so many pink shirts, was throwing chairs around the lunch room.
My 12 year old son likes pink - I told him it takes a confident boy to wear pink (of which he is).
If you take the story on face value, without a lot of details, I think the kids took this action on their own; maybe they had an effectual admin, who knows. But you can’t control kids being mean, that’s a fact of life, as you mention. I’m just pleased to read that it appears that they didn’t need an adult to solve the problem. And it took a certain amount of guts and humor to make the bullies see that they were being called to task. Kudos.
Yes, it takes a confident one. Jim Cramer wears pink, purple, green — all sorts of colors.
Nice! LOL ;-D
You absolutely can’t control kids being mean, but the system is certainly at fault when the system does more to constrain the harassed than the harasser. When a blind eye is mostly turned to what the troublemaker kids do, because it’s the 10th time they’ve done it, but the slightest hint of retaliation brings down the hammer on the kid they did it to. Of course, I’m biased. I made a teacher cry by telling her that if she couldn’t shut a kid up, I would, and whatever happened to him would be on her head. I got sent to the counselor, he got sent to the counselor and nothing changed (until I slammed him into a locker). Perhaps that’s shaped my foreign policy outlook: Some people just don’t take to diplomacy, and you gotta carry a big stick.
You express it perfectly. That is the reality of the situation. Of course, lots of comments are mano e mano solutions. Girl bullies are terrible and in typical fashion ... it lasts forever. They never let go.
Good one!
That was me watching.
“I don’t thing Elvis was ever accused of being queer, was he?”
In the deep South, in the ‘50’s??? HELL YEAH!
Elvis’s trademark style was sported by the future “king” back in HS and it was Red West interfering in one such clothes inspired boys room dust up that Elvis’s met the guy who became his chief bodyguard in after years. Red west even wrote one of Elvis’s hit songs (can’t recall the title). He went on to co-star, IIRC, in Baa Baa Blacksheep (TV Series).
In the late 195Os at Dinner Key Auditorium, Coconut Grove, Fla. General Motors showed among the many cars, a Black Pontiac Landau named “LaParisienne” that had “—tty Pink” interior. It was one hell of a pimp car and probably the first. Except for their jet car it was the star of the show.
Be that as it may, I bet he got more nooky than all those that were accusing him of being kweer, X 10!!
I’ll have my wife pop me upside the head:)
I remember the pink shirts and gray pants time - Those days, there were no gay pride days/parades and no appropriation of colors...no in-your-face.
These young kids sure have lots of discretionary income for a fleeting “cause” if they were so inspired to purchase 75 pink shirts, even at $10.00 each.
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