BATTLE MOUNTAIN - On Wednesday, Nov. 28, Sondra Torgerson and 51 students from Battle Mountain High School attended a documentary film directed by Lee Hirsch entitled "Bully."
"Bully" stitches together the stories of five families across America over the course of one school year. Two of the families continue to grieve after their loved ones were bullied into suicide.
The other three continue to stick it out to continue their tales. The teens have to deal with incarceration, being alienated by their peers, and facing death threats as well as physical abuse throughout the film. To top all of the madness off, they fall victim to negligence in their towns and school systems.
Cameras captured the emotional toll that the kids endured and finally gave them that much needed voice in hopes of stopping this madness.
"Bully" dips into the harsh waters of the menacing acts that take place nationwide that nobody really likes to talk about. The ultimate goal of the film is to boost the anti-bullying movement.
Principal Susan Baldwin and Dean of Students Sondra Torgerson wish to pursue the same thing in Battle Mountain High School.
With students viewing the film they believe the message will spread faster through their peers if it is coming from kids their age.
To keep the effect of the movie alive, a debriefing was held the following Tuesday. There the students who attended as well as Baldwin, Torgerson and Jill Paull, the high school art teacher and FOR club adviser, discussed some of the problems that they have witnessed every day.
They dwelled on the types of violence that was common in the area. What were really stressed were those of cyber bullying, verbal abuse, and the conflicts that happen in the hallways and classrooms, as well as the sports teams.
The main focus of the debriefing was to devise ways to extinguish, if not slowly dull, any and all bullying issues that go unrecognized in the Battle Mountain High School.
"Doing nothing is doing something," Susan Baldwin said during the get together. With those words hanging in the air, change is under way.
A group of students presented to the BMHS staff on Dec. 14 to help raise awareness at their level and to elicit their support in a joint effort to extinguish bullying at BMHS.
Andresa Dinwiddie is a junior at Battle Mountain High School.
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