Simon in “Teased”

Simon

[to his Social Studies class] I don't feel safe at school, and I'm tired of waiting for everyone else to make our school safe for us. You know, every time there's a shooting, we hear that the shooter was someone who felt that there was a score to settle, and it's always someone who felt they had to shoot someone to get even. You know, that's a weird concept. Some calls you a name, so you kill them? But the name-callers are relentless. You know they are. And like a pack, they engage others in their hunt to destroy the already vulnerable students. They're torturing people. And you know what? We allow it. We hear them, we don't speak up. Or worse, we hear them, we join in. If not in the hallways, on the internet. The teasing that isolates one student or a couple of students from the rest of us has to stop. And I think the only way it's going to, is if we stop ourselves. The issue is not who's to blame. The issue is who's going to take the responsibility. Why don't we claim responsibility? I mean, after all we're the one with the really power here. We have the power to change people's lives. We have the power to save people's lives.So I say we claim that power. Seize the day. You know, there are always going to be cliques in high school, there are always gonna be the popular students and the not-so-popular students. There are always gonna be winners and losers, teasers and the teased. But I think it's time for the mean and the cruel to be silenced by our insistence...before they or any of us is silenced by a gun. You know, because we don't know who's on the brink. We can't know who's merely threatening retaliation, and who's actually is capable of carrying out a threat. What we do know...is that we can make a difference.