When 15-year-old Phoebe Prince emigrated from Ireland to a quiet Massachusetts town, she probably did not expect to be reduced to the choice to stay alive or die. And she probably did not expect that the burden of living through the indiscriminate hate of her peers would push her to choose the latter as a means of escape.
After reportedly enduring months of torture at the hands of her classmates, Prince committed suicide in January. And now, those who students say are responsible for referring to her as the “Irish whore,” scratching out her face in hallway pictures beside crude epithets and a stream of violent threats via text message are being brought to justice. Nine teenagers are bypassing slaps on the wrist and stays in the principal’s office and are being charged criminally, and it is what needs to be done to make sure that no student or person should suffer the same fate again. New citizens in this country should be welcomed with open arms, and their postmortem memorial pages on Facebook certainly should not be marred with slurs as Prince’s was. Even after death, the girl could not escape bearing the brunt of the group newspapers referred to as the “Mean Girls” in initial reports following the girl’s suicide.
This country needs to rid itself of the notion that continuous torture is expected and unavoidable behavior of adolescent and teenage girls &-&- it is neither. The behavior exhibited by those who are being charged is reprehensible and despicable, and those qualities transcend gender, age or any facet of personality or character. Referring to the group as the “Mean Girls” is only further projecting the gimmick that the Lindsay Lohan tribe helped to spawn a few years ago and what has become a delusional model of growing up rather than the subject of mockery which stood as its intent.
Stalking. Criminal harassment. Statutory rape. These charges are beyond towel snaps in the locker room or grabass in the hallway. These are serious crimes with serious consequences and if the girls in question were jealous of Prince’s short-lived relationship with a football star at the school &-&- which some say was the bullying’s catalyst &-&- then they can stew in the muddiness of their envy from their seats at a courtroom.
There is no excuse for hate, and there should be no hiding from its repercussions. Prince was one of many who suffered the same fate, and if those who harmed her are brought to such severe justice, a dirty but necessary precedent will be set.
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