What started off as a quick survey of the student body’s perspective on bullying turned into a hat full of anonymous note cards with shocking pleas to stop bullying.  Our staff set out to bring awareness to the issue of bullying present in our school, but we, ourselves, didn’t imagine just the things that would be brought to our attention.

We began our cover story by walking around the lunchroom asking students to participate in our story on bullying.  Students wrote down on a note card an act related to bullying that they want to stop, whether it be something that happened to them or that they saw happen to a friend.

These cards were thrown into a hat without us responding to them – or even looking at them – as we continued our survey of the school.

We acknowledged from the start that finding students who would be willing, even anonymously, to write something about such a serious topic might be extremely difficult, yet as we walked around, the hat morphed into a place for students to vent.

Numerous students welcomed to the idea of letting their concerns and pleas be heard.  Other students chose to pass the marker along to a friend who might have something important to let out.  Some students praised the idea; some chose to ignore us, while others politely declined.

There were a few specific moments that stuck out as learning opportunities.  The first came when one of our editors approached a table that specifically asked what we were surveying about.  As she began to explain the cover story, the students laughed and made some rude remarks.  It amazed us that such blatant disrespect for such a threatening epidemic lurks at our school.

Even more shocking were the responses we pulled out of the hat.  After finishing our lunchroom survey, we began rummaging through the hat-full of note cards.  The results were astonishing.  The haunting pleas written on the note cards surpassed our expectations in quantity and severity of the offense.

As we read stop “calling me a terrorist,” our jaws dropped at the incredible amount of prejudice someone could have in making such a remark to the student who wrote this note card.

We included these handwritten responses throughout this issue: on the cover, on this page and on the previous pages’ cover story. Beyond those responses, however, were words we simply will not print in a high school newspaper – and would yield severe consequences to students who were heard using them in the halls.

We hope that from our small survey, which turned into the abundance of pleas on our front cover, more attention will be brought to the bullying that clearly lingers in the halls.

It is not our goal to point fingers at specific people who have used these words and actions toward others, but rather to bring attention to the entire student body and the larger school community.