Ibuprofen vs. Suicide--It’s Time to Get Our Priorities Straight

As a country, we have gone wildly off course in protecting our children, and our school policies have reflected that, especially regarding policies protecting children identified as gay. Two cases in the media have highlighted that, but I have not seen anyone put them together or discuss the actual policy. Both cases have been decried, but no one is asking the tough questions.

 

The first case, or really cases, revolves around young boys committing suicide because they have been relentlessly bullied with taunts of being gay. Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, an 11-year old boy from Massachusetts hanged himself to stop the taunts. Not long after, Jaheem Herrera from he Atlanta area hanged himself to stop bullying because no one in the school would help him. His best friend told Jaheem’s mother who then told the local news about Jaheem’s attempts to get help being ignored:

 

Herrera’s mother and stepfather say they were aware of the consistent bullying, although their son tried to hide the extent of it. His mother, Masika Bermudez, complained to the school, reports WSB-TV, and she talked with his best friend about the situation.

 

“He said, ‘Yes ma’am. He told me that he’s tired of everybody always messing with him in school. He is tired of telling the teachers and the staff, and they never do anything about the problems. So, the only way out is by killing himself,’” Bermudez told WSB-TV.

 

Bullying goes on in our schools every day, it is brutal, and it is pervasive. Students are forced to go to school under these conditions, and God forbid there are any stereotypical gay characteristics about them (which in the minds of the bullies may simply mean a boy is weaker than average). That simply puts a target on their back, and many of our schools do nothing.

 

The second case has come to a head in the United States Supreme Court this past week. In 2003, Savana Redding was a thirteen-year old, eighth-grade student who was subjected to being strip-searched because another student claimed Savana gave her ibuprofen.

 

The officials were acting on a tip from another student and were looking for prescription-strength ibuprofen, a painkiller. They made Ms. Redding strip to her underwear, shake her bra and pull aside her panties. The officials, both female, found no pills.

 

“What this school official did,” Mr. Wolf said, referring to the male assistant principal who ordered the search, “was act on nothing more than a hunch — if that — that Savana was currently concealing ibuprofen pills underneath her underpants for others’ oral consumption.”

 

Ibuprofen? Headache medication in the school warrants such extreme measures that a student will be pulled from their school routine and strip searched by two school officials? The so-called war on drugs has gotten so heated in our schools that their zero-tolerance policies drive school officials to drag students into a room and humiliate them with a strip-search for headache medication.

 

And yet gay students, or students who in the minds of bullies are gay, fear for their lives and their safety goes ignored. Daily, pervasive, and obvious bullying of a student tagged as gay that is directly reported to teachers does not warrant any school officials’ time and efforts, but one accusation of a student having ibuprofen in the school is enough to take away two officials' time to humiliate a student through a strip-search.

 

While it should be acknowledged that not all school districts are the same, in general our schools are placing a frenzied, zero-tolerance policy on keeping any and all drugs (including legal ones) out of schools above the safety and well-being of students marked as gay. It is time for us to ask ourselves what is most important… the lives and well-being of all of our students or attacking the unauthorized use of headache medication.

 

Until we get our priorities straight, here is a way for our students to defend themselves—instead of reporting bullying to school officials, report the bullies as hiding aspirin in their underwear.

Comments

[A.B.]

Bravo for your commonsense.

[LoneTruth]

Victims of bullying should be taught self-defense (karate, kung-fu), and should be made to keep log of who's bullying them, for legal and reporting reasons. Teachers who are told about the bullying should be held accountable.
Identified perpetrators need to be publicly flogged, and suspended (and eventually expelled). The parents need to be held accountable in some way.

After proper documentation, victims who lash eventually lash out and stab, maim, or shoot the perpetrators should NOT be punished.

[term papers writing]

Blogs are so interactive where we get lots of informative on any topics nice job keep it up !!

[term paper writing]

The good thing about your information is that it is explicit enough for students to grasp. Thanks for your efforts in spreading academic knowledge.