Effort: Failed (534)

        Thursday at school, there was an assembly held. One that never really addressed the reason why we were there, just beat around the bush which annoyed me. We were all gathered in a gym listening to a person with a microphone because someone was not there, which is what the person with the microphone didn't address. Brielle Thompson, a sweet and loved girl, took her life because of bullying. There i said it. I feel like just those words spoken from a person of authority would've had a bigger impact on us than a video, some speakers, and a group of kids singing (no hard feelings). One assembly talking about bullying will not change us. What we need is a social revolution if we ever want to change the suicide rates, the bullying rates, the mental illness rates. Many people take mental illness as a joke, but do they not realize that we most likely cause them? Telling us to write kind words on a clothespin was a nice gesture, but these people must be crazy if they think it will change anything at all. I still saw people write mean things as jokes which makes me wonder if the assembly was just a waste of time because of the misleading words from the speakers. Mr. Kline preached kindness because we are surrounded by negativity, Amanda Goodwin preached that we can't let others define us, and Nina Yu preached about accepting everybody. But it is not that easy. In my opinion, the adults babied us in this situation. A child, our classmate, is dead because of girls actions and words. A little girl will never get to experience love, a marriage, kids, graduation, or another summer day. Why does that not seem like a problem to adults? We need to address this situation head on if we want people to change. We need to put them in the shoes of Brielle's friends and family to feel what they are feeling. I don't think others get that being nice goes a long way that's why i try to say "hi" to everybody in the hall ways. You never know when someone is having a bad day, you never know when someone has problems at home, you just never know when someone is dealing with a certain type of hell so why make it worse, ya know? It's scary that our society and this generation pours hurts out of their mouth and crawls out of their fingertips on to a keyboard to show the world. Do we not care? Have we lost feeling? We can spew "slut" and
whore" so easily at someone that we used to call our bestfriend and it doesn't even phase us. We can talk so much crap about someone and make fun of them and it doesn't even phase us! We need something much more than an assembly and we need it now if we want this to change because people keep dying and nothing is changing. For Brielle and for the rest of the innocent lives that have fallen victim to suicide, we need to rise up and unite in kindness if we want any of the statistics to change.