This week our class learned about World War I. We are starting a project on war and how people have been treated, which then led to a discussion of the Boston Globe article headlined The Untouchable Mean Girls, about a 14-year-old girl who moved from Ireland to Massachusetts with her family this past fall. Phoebe Prince was a nice, beautiful and smart girl who came to America lacking an understanding of our teen culture, and her life ended in despair. Phoebe had no idea what she was walking into. She was a freshman dating a senior football player, which meant that she was a threat to the other girls also known as the “mean girls.” They decided to show Phoebe her place and make her pay for what she had done.

The girls at her high school ostracized, stalked and insulted her. One day she was walking home when one of the mean girls threw a can and screamed an insult at her. She kept on walking, but when she arrived home she hanged herself in her closet. Instead of showing remorse for what they had done, the mean girls mocked her in death. They wrote terrible comments on her Facebook page and continued to make fun of her. They were completely relentless.

As a class, this article woke a lot of us up. Nearly every student in our class had something to add into our discussion about what happened to Phoebe. We all believe that bullying, both in and out of school grounds, should be stopped before it becomes such an issue. We found the article heartbreaking and couldn’t understand how anyone could do such things. We’re all aware that bullying goes on everyday all around us, but never thought that it would reach this point.

State officials are now considering placing bullying under the hate law. Our discussion had differing opinions in this particular area. Some argued that it was overboard to call bullying a hate crime and bullies shouldn’t risk jail. Others argued that if bullying has become this serious, there needs to be something serious done.

As a class we don’t ever want to read or discuss another article about bullying to this extent, or any bullying. I believe that many of us are thankful that we are not the person being bullied, so we almost disregard this huge issue. Reading this article woke us up, and hopefully now each of us will remember this — and the next time we witness bullying, we will take a stand.

Jessie Chandler, editor

Bullying and Gender

By Shelby Ferry>

Bullying is becoming a major problem. Now who do you think is more prone to bullying, girls or boys? Well, in my opinion, girls take care of the untraceable verbal and mental bullying, while guys take care of the physical bullying. Girls can be very vicious when it comes to turning people against others and making the victims feel horrible enough to kill themselves. Recently a girl in Massachusetts killed herself after being mentally and verbally abused so badly. It is sad that anyone could possibly be so horrible as to drive someone to his or her death.

Girls have a unique way of ostracizing people and leaving no trace of doing it. All they have to do is make up some nasty rumor about the person and start spreading it. Then their goal is accomplished when no one will talk to the victim. Guys, on the other hand, are not really capable of verbally and mentally bullying someone. They usually go for the physical, or threat, approach. It is very interesting how differently the genders do bullying.

Finally I think that schools off-Island have more severe cases of bullying than MVRHS. Our Island is more sheltered from the everyday life of America and what goes on in big city schools. We’re are very lucky to be living in such a nice and safe place.

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Put the End to Bullying

By Madison Hughes>

This week our class has talked about bullying. It surprised me how far teenagers can take things and how bad bullying actually is in school. This group of girls bullied an Irish teenage girl named Phoebe Prince so horribly for dating a popular football player that she committed suicide. She was a new girl from Ireland and didn’t understand how ex-girlfriends made huge deals if someone talked to their ex-boyfriends. The worst part of this whole thing was that after Phoebe Prince had died the group of girls kept this drama going, and still were writing mean things on her Facebook wall, and still being terrible people.

After hearing this terrible story, I believe staff in the schools need to be more aware of what’s happening to certain students being bullied. I also believe the new Massachusetts law being discussed definitely needs to be enforced. I think what happened to this girl has opened people’s eyes on bullying, how bad it actually is, and how bad it makes the victims feel about themselves.

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Enforce School Rules Against Bullying

By Courtney Mussell>

Our U.S. History II class has been talking about bullying. Ms. Weintraub was talking about how Massachusetts is concerned about bullying especially in schools — so concerned, that there is a possibility of making a law considering bullying to be a hate crime with serious consequences.

I think there are more places off-Island where bullying is more serious as opposed to MVRHS. If this did become a law, I don’t think that MVRHS needs to be very worried about it because there is not a serious amount of bullying that occurs in our school. In my opinion, before making this law, Massachusetts needs to be more specific about exactly what bullying is. Bullying should be taken care of, and there are other ways to handle it than making laws, because there are already school rules against bullying. The real problem is that schools don’t enforce their rules.

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Shame on the School

By Rafael Maciel>

In our class we recently had a talk about a high school girl who killed herself after being bullied. Phoebe Prince from South Hadley High School was only 15 years old. She had been constantly bullied via text messages and MySpace.

This showed how much damage bullying can cause. I do blame the girls for the death of Phoebe Prince, but mostly I blame the school. I don’t understand how the school can let a girl get to the point were she would commit suicide. Here at MVRHS I feel as if there is a big effort to reduce bullying and I think that it has worked. I think that South Hadley High School could do more to help prevent bullying, and they should be ashamed to let something like this happen.

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We Need the History of the World

By Cal FIORE>

For the past 10 years of our education, whenever we have studied history and government it has been the history and government of America. Americans continue to grow more and more ignorant of the cultures and important issues of other countries. Not a single student in my class could tell me that Gordon Brown is the prime minister of the United Kingdom. The majority of Britons and other foreigners know that Barack Obama is our president; why shouldn’t we be just as concerned with what goes on in their country? The two main causes for this ignorance are the education system and the press. The schools should teach foreign politics and issues, and there should be more press coverage given to these issues. It’s about time that America stops being so self-involved and starts paying more attention to international issues.

Brazilian History Matters

By Livia Sampaio>

Some immigrants come to the United States very young, like me, and we practically become Americans. We learn the language, the culture and the history. We become more knowledgeable of the American culture than our own. Since I am a native from Brazil, I think it is important to have a class that teaches us about the Brazilian history. Not only for us to learn about our own culture, but for others that have the curiosity to learn too. I think that it was a great idea for the high school to make a Brazilian history class for next year since we have so many Brazilian kids in the school. I definitely plan on taking it.