Five Mentor High School students have committed suicide in recent years. That’s a troubling number, and it hasn’t escaped the attention of parents or the media, especially when families say that bullying in the halls of the high school drove their children to despair. Two of those families have sued the school district. One lawsuit has been dropped, the other goes on.
There’s a documentary in the works by Alix Lambert on the alleged Mentor bullying problem, the trailer for which is above. The film isn’t completed yet, but it’s already touched nerves in the city.
School officials posted brief notes on the MHS site this week in response to the trailer and a Plain Dealer article about the documentary. They haven’t and won’t say much — legal reasons, naturally.
This article appears in Mar 28 – Apr 3, 2012.
When does bullying move from discomfort and minor anxiety to torture and potential suicide? Like most things, it would depend on the one being abused. Some can take very little teasing and are brought to points of break-down easily. Often when teasers and bullys see that a kid is being hurt badly by the teasing, some dish out more, and some see the pain and stop and may even get the others to stop…but when a whole hard teasing and bullying group lay it on it is hard to stop..Sometimes these types are popular and are reinforced for their bullying. What I think is that no one school has that much more or less of this behavior happening, but that the student dynamics of a particular time and place create a spike in the bad behavior. Take Chardon and Mentor and see that tradgedies have happened in both school environments. They are both still good places to live and are not perfect but nor are they much more or less dangerous than any school or city or town in the state. Ohio is a pretty violent state and the Cleveland area is often considered the most violent, although Cinci is right behind us. The best thing we can all do is try to settle the violence down with reason and get to it before it explodes. The adults often contribute far more to the violence than we would like to believe. Oh and, just about all of us (men) are guilty at one time or another of bad behavior so don’t cop a judgemental attitude or blame it on a nationality or type or class of people. We need to become more calm now that we have all of these repubichairs packing six-shooters…Oh, and some of us libtards are also armed and dangerous also. Strange times indeed. Be tolerant and kind and do not stir shit or over-react to pushy men…there are too many of them to fight.
Typical school administrator response…see no evil…hear no evil…speak no evil.
I don’t think anyone is claiming that there are not many wonderful things about Mentor and the Mentor School District.
That being said, for the administration to try and claim that bullying, either now or at any time in the past, has never existed at Mentor High is just plain ridiculous. Bullling, in some form or other, is everywhere. Mentor may have many good qualities, but there is no way they are perfect.
Get your head out of the sand, Mentor, and stop trying to act like this has never been a problem. Let’s ask the kids who committed suicide over this. Oh that’s right, we can’t!!!!!
The new Mentor High School principal has a wonderful reputation from Riverside. He ran Riverside with the demand and expectation that everyone will behave respectful towards each other. He dealt with bullies targeting another quickly and decisively. Nothing more can be expected or asked. That being said, Jackie Hoynes has always tried to turn the situation in Mentor around on the kids that were targeted.
For the record, a female student was a special education student who was targeted. Her mother reported that her daughter would not have taken her life except for those who harassed her. The male was pushed into lockers, hit up-side his head, had books knocked out of his arms, called “Faggot, queer, gay,” and told, “Why don’t you go home and shoot yourself, it’s not like anyone would care.” Another female student was targeted because she had come out and was tormented because of it. Yet another female student was pushed down the school stairs, called gay because she didn’t have a boyfriend, and repeatedly cyber-harassed. At her funeral, one of the bullies make comments about her funeral dress being ugly.
Since Mentor needs to have a definition, let me provide it…Bullying is the repeated verbal harassment and/or physical aggression from 1 individual onto another with the intent of doing as much physical and/or emotional harm as they can get away with. Just because a bully says, “I was just playing,” or “It was just a joke,” does NOT mean they were just playing or it was a joke. Jackie Hoynes needs to get out of education, go home, sit down, and shut up.
Jacqueline Hoynes is a morally bankrupt government lifer who would never make it in the real world. A pathological liar who is only truthful when its mouth is shut and its paws do not hold a writing instrument of any kind.
As far as William Wade goes, he is the same species of spineless bureaucrat that spews the same catch phrases (“deflect negativity”) taught at management seminars run by insurance companies, and that tries to deflect criticism by turning a thoughtful look at the evil within into a b-rate pep rally. No wonder this “school” system is a malodorous underarm of the midwest.