The Jeremiah Lasater tragedy
October 22nd, 2008 Linda Slocum Posted in Editorial
Student commits suicide in high school restroom after being tormented and
bullied on a daily basis because he was " different" .
Caution: This post may be considered to be controversial by some, as it includes some straight-talk about various types of intolerance.
Students at Vasquez High School in Acton, which sits on the border
between the Santa Clarita and Antelope Valleys, got to witness the consequences
of bullying and intolerance first-hand this week, when Jeremiah Lasater
committed suicide in a school restroom. Jeremiah had apparently reached his
limits after being subjected to daily tormenting by his fellow students.
Jeremiah had reportedly been tormented by his classmates in middle school (High
Desert School) as well, but it seems the administrators at both schools, the
middle school and high school, didn't see the need to intervene. Why was
Jeremiah so " special" that he deserved this treatment?
Apparently he was a special-needs student, standing 6 feet, 6 inches tall and
weighing nearly 300 pounds. He didn't fit into the so-called " norm" , so his classmates went out of their way to make sure he knew
that day, after day, after day until he finally broke down and took his
own life to end his misery.
Says Stan Halperin, Acton-Agua Dulce Unified
School District's superintendent, " We have a zero-tolerance
policy, and when we have an incident of bullying or taunting we address it
immediately. We call in the parents and follow the policy, which included
suspension and following the suspension with a learning pattern to teach the
kids that bullying is wrong." Uh, huh Other parents have indicated that
schools in the Acton area have long been known for not taking enough action
regarding bullying on campus. I've had calls from parents living in Acton
who didn't want to give up their house and acreage there, but desperately
wanted to find somewhere inexpensive in the Santa Clarita Valley to call "
home" , at least on paper, so their kids didn't have to go to
their local schools.
So, now the school district is paying for grief
counselors for these bullying kids, while Jeremiah's parents plan for his
funeral What's wrong with this picture?
This has been a week chock-full
of intolerance, as election day is just around the corner and Proposition 8
supporters are gearing up by announcing their intolerance of the gay lifestyle.
In my opinion, intolerance is intolerance, no matter how you attempt to justify
it. It doesn't matter what the target is, whether it's calling a homosexual a " sinner" , referring to a person of
color by the " N-word" , calling an overweight person "
fatty" , or referring to the low-income Latino women in the Newhall
area as " those stroller-pushing mamas"'. All of these examples are derogatory
and represent an intolerance of those who are different from yourself. And if
you're a parent, your children are likely picking
up on this " vibe" and may be using it as a weapon against
others in the schoolyard.
The question that many are asking is, "
How do our children learn intolerance?" Well, it would seem that they learn it
first at home, and then at school from their peers. Not all of us had the luxury
of growing up in a household free of intolerance, but we do have the opportunity
to make the choice as to whether we're going to perpetuate
that intolerance in our children and in our own lives. Can people change the way
they act (and react) around people who are " different" than
them? Of course they can! But will they, or will we continue to hear stories of
kids either being murdered (as was the 14-year-old in Oxnard recently) or
committing suicide as the result of bullying and intolerance?
See if you
can catch yourself in the act of being intolerant, and then reflect on whether
you really like that type of behavior or not, or if it's just an old "
reaction" that you'd like to change. It can start with something
as simple as refraining from giving someone " the bird" when
they cut you off in traffic. Think about it how much do you do on a daily
basis that is a result of your earlier " programming" , and how does that fit
who you are today? Do you like the way you feel when you're acting intolerant,
or does it leave behind a feeling of anger or resentment that then follows you
like a black cloud for the rest of the day? It takes effort to change years of
patterning, but it's definitely possible if you're persistent.
Fortunately, it seems many of today's children are choosing to make their own decisions to some extent, often going against their parents' examples of intolerance, and instead are just accepting people for who they are. Let's hope that Santa Clarita's parents and school administrators will quickly learn how to end bullying and tormenting in our schools, instead of turning the other way and acting as if it didn't happen. We are all aware that administrators and staff on certain campuses will watch bullying happen and do nothing to stop it's time to either reassign or retrain those people so no more parents are burying children who were killed on our school campuses as a result of intolerance.