Hey all - was just doing some thinking (uh oh!) and a little thought came to my silly mind. Probably one that's already been discussed here and probably one that's duh common sense but I'll post it anyway. I was thinking about a situation I recently had in school in which I was being harassed by a classmate and my school failed to to do anything about it (wow big surprise!). anyway, I was thinking back to that time and how when I finally started to tell people - professors, dean of students, director of my program, campus police, etc. - how I was scared of what my classmate would do if he was confronted about his behavior by one of these people. I was very worried that it would send him over the edge and he would end up going really crazy and murder me or something. When I finally told my mother what was going on it was also a fear she had, but of course it did finally get to the point where I had to let all of these people know, however it was a very hard decision because as I said, I was worried about what would happen both if I didn't say anything and if I did.
The point of my very long story is that it's likely Phoebe didn't approach anyone about her situation because she was afraid of what would happen. Let's face it - a girl tells someone in charge that these girls are saying mean things to her or pushing books out of her hand and honestly it's gonna take her reporting things like this a million times before anything real is done to help her. First they would probably just "talk" to the girls 5 times. Then maybe detention. Then suspension. Then they'll probably just get more mad at her because she's getting them in trouble. It seems like not even worth it to tell anyone what's going on because it's just going to make things worse. And it's very possible she begged her mom not to go to the school. Obviously a mom will only listen to that to a certain point, if at all, if she thinks it's going to make things worse for her daughter. I know when my mom got involved before she did anything she would tell me and make sure I was okay with it but at one point she was like "I don't care, this has to stop, I'm calling and I'm doing something whether you want me to or not".
Anyway this is probably common sense and has already been talked about but it's just something that popped into my head.
Also, I posted a link to this video on the Phoebe Prince Memorial Page on Facebook and they actually made it a link on their page today. I absolutely love this song and when it came on my iPod on a drive this weekend it immediately made me think of Phoebe. It never fails to at least choke me up a bit, it's a really beautiful song.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAIKznMPXUk&feature=player_embedded"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAIKznMPXUk&feature=player_embedded[/ame]
k I'm done. thanks for reading if you made it this far
