Forgive me in advance for being a little more cynical this week than I usually am in this space.
The following may be an unpopular view on a sensitive subject facing our society, but based on my own observations and many conversations with affected parents and teenagers, it also carries a heavy dose of truth.
Let me preface this by saying that I think the anti-bullying awareness campaign known as Pink Shirt Day is a fantastic gesture, and if it’s actually helped stamp out bullying in some places and allowed kids to just be themselves without fear of abuse, then it’s safe to say mission accomplished.
Pink Shirt Day started after an attention-grabbing act of kindness in small-town Nova Scotia back in 2007. A snippet from an article in the Globe & Mail describes how it originally came together:
“David Shepherd, Travis Price and their teenage friends organized a high-school protest to wear pink in sympathy with a Grade 9 boy who was being bullied [for wearing a pink shirt]…[They] took a stand against bullying when they protested against the harassment of a new Grade 9 student by distributing pink T-shirts to all the boys in their school.
‘I learned that two people can come up with an idea, run with it, and it can do wonders,’ says Mr. Price, 17, who organized the pink protest. ‘Finally, someone stood up for a weaker kid.’
So Mr. Shepherd and some others headed off to a discount store and bought 50 pink tank tops. They sent out message to schoolmates that night, and the next morning they hauled the shirts to school in a plastic bag. As they stood in the foyer handing out the shirts, the bullied boy walked in. His face spoke volumes.
‘It looked like a huge weight was lifted off his shoulders,’ Mr. Price recalled. The bullies were never heard from again.”
To date, more than 400,000 pink shirts have been sold through the initiative and more than $2.3 million in proceeds have gone on towards anti-bullying measures in Western Canada.
Now, that all being said, I also share the likely unpopular belief that sometimes this pink shirt initiative seems to be done purely for the ‘photo op’ while the actual issue of bullying in some schools and other walks of life goes unnoticed and unresolved.
Is it admirable and does it produce real results in some cases? Absolutely. But in those other cases, those more extreme cases where more work needs to be done, does it do anything besides look interesting in a group picture and only appear on the surface that bullying is being addressed? Sadly, no.
Kids are dying out there, people. They’re threatening to kill themselves or worse, they’re actually following through on those threats. They’re coming home from school feeling like the biggest piece of trash on the planet because the sharp, stinging and unfiltered remarks and verbal venom from other kids have made them think they have no self-worth. They’re coming home feeling less and less important.
I’ve had conversations with parents who were fed up with what was being done, or rather what NOT was being done at the local level to address bullying in school hallways. The end result sees kids shipped off to another school, taken away from their friends and support system. Sometimes it’s just across town, and sometimes it’s to a school in another community altogether.
Maybe it stops being just a school thing. Maybe it becomes a town and community thing. Maybe the issue of bullying is something that gets tackled at the municipal level, instead of dumping it off to overworked teachers and staff who are already dealing with dozens of different problems on a daily basis. Maybe it becomes something that we as a collective region get together and discuss on an adult level, and I mean the whole kit and caboodle – the good, the bad, and the ugly side of bullying. If you don’t know what the finite problem is, how can you begin to solve it?
The intent behind Pink Shirt Day is obviously quite admirable, but I think that unless we're actually willing to do the hard, uncomfortable work to address the disturbing and growing problems associated with bullying, abuse and harassment in order to snuff them out for good, then all we're really doing is paying lip service and jumping on a bandwagon when we collectively agree to wear the same shade of color for one day every year.
If anyone out there feels bullied or harassed in any way and just needs an ear to listen, reach out to me. I can’t promise I’ll be wearing pink, but I’m here 365 days a year.
For this week, that’s been the Ruttle Report.
