My little brother graduated from high school back in May. I literally spent the entire graduation weekend saying how I could not believe he was a senior and about to go off to college. Joseph especially enjoyed senior year of high school because he had a lot of friends from many different groups and cliques. He had his marching band friends, his garage band friends (I will never miss them practicing in our basement), and his lacrosse friends. My parents and I have talked since the summer of 2010 about how he suddenly grew up.
I was completely jealous of their graduation ceremony. It was outside on a gorgeous day (when I had to graduate in our gym and only invite 4 people to the ceremony), the speeches were not all the same, and the got to use confetti poppers at the end. However, my mom said I should not be jealous of the girls in the class of 2011 and she had never been happier that Joseph was a boy. Apparently, most of the girls in the senior class (including two that I used to babysit for many years) all experienced the wrath of a girl named Alex.
I heard many stories that weekend from my brother, my mom, and my mom’s friends and their daughters. I re-interviewed them after I started this project and even e-mailed with some former teachers at my school.
Joseph
My brother was not oblivious to the drama that was going on with all the girls in the senior class. However, as a boy and also someone who has never cared about drama and popularity, he was mostly an observer. He told me that back in October, for reasons that he never knew, Alex decided to completely stop speaking to her friend and field hockey teammate named Sydney. He believes Sydney was spending more time with other friends than the girls on the team. Alex’s harassment of Sydney in person and also over Facebook and Instant Messenger got so bad that Sydney quit field hockey completely. In October, Sydney and Alex’s best friend Taylor were both nominated for Homecoming court. Sydney dropped out of the race after Alex told her over an Instant Message: “When you step out on the field, we will get the whole stadium to boo you.” Sydney dropped out of the race. Joseph told me that he thinks that Taylor could have been the one to stop Alex. Instead, she enjoyed watching the drama play out and encouraged her to be the ultimate mean girl.
Ann Cowper
Mrs. Cowper has been my neighbor in Fredericksburg since we moved in. Her daughter Fay graduated with Joseph this past spring. I used to babysit Fay and her two younger siblings for many years. I can’t believe how grown-up she was when I saw her at graduation and when she friended me on Facebook. Mrs. Cowper was at our house for Joseph’s party. She told me she had spoken with many of the mothers of girls in the senior class about Alex. Sydney’s parents actually ended up going to the school with copies of the online conversations because Alex’s bullying had turned into threats. She was suspended for a week in October, but only after the administration witnessed her saying something at school. Apparently, just like in the case with Ryan Halligan, the schools were not prepared to deal with bullying that was occurring on the Internet. Mrs. Cowper was nervous because Fay hung out in the same group of girls as Alex. Fay became a target in the spring. She was good friends with Alex’s ex-boyfriend and set him up with one of her friends from a different school. Fay received a text message right before graduation that said: “I will kill you.” Mrs. Cowper says she is sure that Fay had been dealing with things like this for a few weeks before she was even aware of it. Mrs. Cowper immediately told Fay she was not allowed to go to beach week and stay in a house with Alex for a week. She also made an appointment with a vice-principal at my high school. Just because the girls had graduated, she wanted the school to know that Alex’s suspension clearly did not affect her in the slightest. Mrs. Cowper wants something to be changed before she had to watch her youngest daughter go through the same thing in a couple of years.
Stacy Churchill
Mrs. Churchill's daughter Emily was another neighbor that I used to babysit and a classmate of Joseph and Fay. My brother hung out with Emily because they were both into going to local band shows. Emily’s boyfriend played in a band that was very popular at the high school. Mrs. Churchill knew about Alex through the gossip, and also when Emily received a Facebook message from her saying that she was not invited to the alternative prom that Alex and her friends were throwing. Mrs. Churchill said she was amazed how this girl’s meanness had no limits. Sydney had moved on and was hanging out with a new group of friends, and Mrs. Churchill thought Alex just needed someone new to pick on to feed her need for attention. She said she was so proud of her daughter when Emily just chose to ignore her.
Mr. Andrews and Mrs. Pierce
Mr. Andrews has been a senior English teacher at my high school for over thirty years. Mrs. Pierce has been the senior class advisor for many years before I was in high school. Both teachers are adults that students feel comfortable coming to with their problems and are around the seniors enough to know what is going on with the class. Mr. Andrews told Mrs. Cowper that in all of his years teaching and also told me in a recent e-mail: “I have never seen meaner girls than Alex and her two friends.” After THIRTY years at Stafford. Mrs. Pierce met with many mothers who were concerned about their daughters’ well-being and was disheartened when she could not get the administration to care. She also told me that she cannot ever remember seeing someone who acted the way Alex did. She saw her try and single-handily divide the groups of girls. She saw her try and dictate who could paint-up before football games, who could come to parties, and like I mentioned above, who could come to the alternative prom. Mrs. Pierce told me, “You think teachers might not notice this things, but Alex did not even try to hide her behavior from adults because her parents let her get away with everything.”
Hearing this happen at my own high school makes me extremely sad. When I was a senior, of course there were different cliques. When you are in a class of almost 500 people, not everyone can be friends. I even admit, I was part of a clique who had a name...But, because we were all so excited about being seniors, we tailgated together, went to all the important senior events together, and had a phenomenal last year at Stafford High. I am so sad that did not happen for the girls in my brother’s class. I am so happy that he did not have to worry about being bullied because he was a boy.
These interviews support the first article that I read about bullying these days: it is about a power struggle to be popular. It was not a group of people picking on and singling out one person. It was basically one person (and the select few girls that she deemed worthy to be her friend) trying to put down as many other people as possible in order to stay on top. She might have the kind of personality that just draws people to her, and takes advantage of that by being manipulative and hurtful. It also supports the quote from Ryan Halligan’s father at the end of my last blog post: the computer helps to facilitate the bullying so it can happen at school and then continue at home. Joseph’s last text to me about this situation was: “Sydney’s bullying was a mix of online and in person, but the online conversations were definitely a factor in getting Alex suspended. Too bad it really only stopped her from being a b*tch right in front of our teachers.”
My interviews were done through Skype with my brother, phone calls with Mrs. Cowper and Mrs. Churchill (although I had talked to all of them in person about this over the summer) and e-mails with Mr. Andrews and Mrs. Pierce.
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