Real Girls, Real Leadership: 9.25.12

I am thrilled to share today's Real Girls, Real Leadership story with you.  My cousin Jess and her daughter Britt are true champions for kindness.  Britt, a student at local Twin Cities high school, took a stand to end cyberbullying at her school.  Her mom, Jess, supported her and together they made a real difference in their community!  Jess and Britt agreed to share their story with us in their own words.

Britt

When I first found out about the "Burn Book" my friend had posted a screenshot of the comment directed at her on Facebook. I was very upset to find out that there was a page targeting people and making them feel bad about themselves. The first comment that I saw was telling a girl that "she wasn't original, no one felt bad for her, and she should go kill herself". So I decided to create a twitter page to follow these terrible posts. After two days of reading the tagged posts I decided to look further into the page. It turns out there was a page before this one that said mean things about teachers and students called the "Washburn Troll", this page had a link that was sent to parents over the summer about the troll posts. The letter said that the district in fact had tried removing the pages but due to the First Amendment stating that you have freedom of speech, Twitter would not take it down.

I was very angry to find this out since both Twitter pages kept hurting people I knew really well. So I told my mom and she sent the links, background information, and the story to Kare11. After a few days of waiting and complaints from other students and parents, they ran the story on Kare11 and WCCO and the twitter pages were deleted.

I hope that what people realize from this is that if you something going on around you that isn't right, tell someone. Do things to stop it, and don't stand back and hope someone else will. Take a stand against bullying and cyber bullying because no one should have to feel threatened or unsafe in their community.

 Jess

Britt came to me and told me about this twitter page that had been started called the "Washburn Burn Book". She told me what it was about and that Twitter would not remove it because of the First Amendment. I felt that allowing this "Burn Book" to stay up was giving kids the ok to bully.

I feel that teenagers are so heavily influenced by their peers especially girls and negativity can affect someone’s self-esteem and confidence. Instead of bringing others down we need to support each other and help each other to become strong, confident individuals. As a mother I have always taught my children to treat others as you would want to be treated.

 Britt came to me because she knew it was wrong. She is very kind, caring and accepting of everyone and she could see that this person’s words were hurting others around her. We went to Kare11 together because we felt that media attention would help shut down this page , and it was just what we needed to get it shut down and bring attention to this issue and let these bully's know that it is not ok and it would be tolerated.

I hope this will make other students aware of what they say to each other, words can be hurtful and can really stick with someone, instead let’s come together and support each other, and find the good in others. 

 

 

Thank you, Britt and Jess, for being courageous and standing up to bullies!  To watch the Kare11 story, click here.

 

If you know a story that should be featured on Real Girls, Real Leadership, please email us at alexandra@centerforgirlsleadership.org.