School Bullying Suicide: Bullied Greensburg student takes his own life – fox59.com

School Bullying Suicide: Bullied Greensburg student takes his own life – fox59.com.

I wish I could say this kind of thing is a tremendously isolated incident. But it’s not. I don’t know if Billy Lucas was gay or not, but the fact is that most statistics show gay teens commit suicide at 3 to 4 times the rate of straight teens. And I really don’t think it matters if it was a rural high school in the Bible Belt, as this one was, or a big city high school in a city like New York or San Francisco, fact is, a lonely teen is a lonely teen. At that age, you feel like you’re the only person in the world who has ever been lonely or felt like you do. I wonder if there were warning signs, if his parents knew of the bullying, and where the fuck were the school officials in all of this? The principal wants to set up a committee to discuss? Are you kidding me? Isn’t it a little late for that?

I suppose even after the fact it might help prevent something else – but not for Billy. The sorry state is that until adults stop seeing teenage male bullying  as normal “boys will be boys” behavior and reclassify it as the gang violence it is, these types of attacks and their result – ruined lives – will continue.

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