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. If you think you may be offended, you have five seconds to click away… one… two… three… four…

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… 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.

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