For this post I decided to look at some current news articles that dealt with the reading for this week. The one reading that stuck out for me was the suicide reading and decided to look up article about that. I looked at three major news sites, FOX, CNN, and MSNBC and searched for suicide and was shocked by how many article popped up within the past few days. FOX had five article that dealt with suicide in the past week, MSNBC had over fifteen in the past week and CNN had over twenty.
One article that caught my eye was is the article titled "3 teens in Mass. bullying-suicide appear in court." In the article it discusses how these girls forced another student to commit suicide. In Hadley Massachusetts three girls, Ashley Longe, Sharon Chanon Velazquez, and Flannery Mullins were accused of bullying their classmate Phoebe Prince till she hanged herself. Apparently the three girls were part of a group of six students that bullied her earlier in the year. The girls are expected to go to trial later in early 2011 and have been charged as youthful offenders with violation of civil rights resulting in bodily injury. Two of the girls, Mullins and Velazquez were charged with stalking and all three of them have pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors believe that Mullins, Velazquez and Longe were angry over Prince's brief relationship with Austin Renaud, Mullins' on-and-off boyfriend which resulted with the bullying. Longe is apparently yelled crude comments, such as "Irish whore" and "stupid slut," at Prince in the school library a few hours before her suicide. Longe also threw an aluminum can at Prince and yelled insults again as the freshman walked home that afternoon, authorities said in court records. Mullins supposedly threatened to beat up Prince, cornering her in a school bathroom, and repeatedly called her an "Irish slut" and posting demeaning comments about her on Face book.
This article reminded me how cruel and unfeeling some people can be as well as how some people are very easily to broken down. This article was a reminder of what goes on in many of the school system and this could be a good place to focus on anti-suicide programs. While I was in high school I heard of 1 completed suicide and 4 attempted.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39334096
This is a very sad story and shows how inhumane some people can be. I like how you ended on a positive note by taking about suicide-prevention programs. I think that more measures should be taken to prevent suicides in universities. The Army uses a suicide-awareness program and educates all of its soldiers on how to prevent suicides from occuring. Although it's not entirely effective it has been proven to reduce the suicide rate in the Army and a similar program could potentially be effective for universities.
ReplyDeleteI actually was reading i think it was People Magazine and they had an entire two pages that showed the pictures of teens and their stories underneath about how each of them committed suicide due to bullying. The stories I read were so heartbreaking becuase most of the guys were bullied for being openly gay and the girls took their own lives because other people in the school were calling them sluts and whores. These teens were so young and it was extremely sad to see that so many kids are taking their own lives due to bullying.
ReplyDeleteThanks for bringing this up Nick.
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