Culture of judgement

Editor’s note: Ruth is a pseudonym to protect the subject’s privacy. 

 

On the morning that led to the worst days of her life, Ruth woke up, ate her breakfast on the car ride to school and walked into her first period class. She was sleep-deprived and depressed: Her eyes were rimmed with dark circles, her flowing, black hair was unusually unkempt.

She had lost almost all of her friends in the past week. Even worse, she had lost her boyfriend, who had stopped returning her messages. She knew what people were saying about her. “B****.” “She deserves to be treated like s***.” “She does this all the time.”

She went through her classes barely functioning. After lunch, she broke down, crying. In seventh period, she barely heard a word. 

When she walked to her locker after school, she saw her ex-boyfriend talking with two of her former best friends — both girls — and she snapped.

Numb, Ruth didn’t quite know what she was doing when she walked up to that group of ex-friends. Unthinking, she could barely hear herself when she told — demanded — that the ex-boyfriend talk to her. Near insane, she had no idea what was happening when she lashed out.

“NO, I won’t talk to you,” the ex said, trying to leave. She grabbed his arm — he’s much larger — an old friend was yelling something into her ear but she didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t hear because she was shoving the friend into dirty gray lockers, pushing her off balance, slamming her into cold metal. 

“It was shocking. I’m a physical sort of person — I use hands when I talk, hold on to people, but I never tried to hurt anyone physically before,” she said, years later. “I was desperate to talk to him, to talk to my friends, to reverse time, to make up for what I had done.

“I was desperate for someone to LISTEN to me. For someone to understand.”

Everyone else fled, but for Ruth and her friend, who cried pathetically. Though trained in the martial arts, Ruth knew she couldn’t hurt anyone, especially not this girl who she’d known for so long. 

But when Ruth went home that night to an orderly Saratoga street, sobbing with the only friend that hadn’t abandoned her, lying awake surrounded by the pink and red of a cheery room until 4 in the morning, she wondered if there was someone worth hurting. Worth killing.

“I laid on the floor and thought if I was dead, everyone would be so much happier,” she said. “If I wasn’t so naive, then everyone would be happy.”

 

FROM TEEN TRUTH LIVE to Speak Up for Change, the school has struggled mightily to combat bullying. In  many ways, it’s been successful, as Saratoga is quite an accepting school. We have relatively few problems with racism, homophobia or gang violence. We have parents who care about their children, educators who never close their doors to students. 

But the reality is that, inevitably, some students still fall through the cracks. Talking to Ruth and others, I have struggled to understand why stories like that of Ruth exist, why — even after all the efforts educators, counselors, students and parents put into combating bullying — some students at this school feel bullied, belittled and suicidal. Pinning the reason solely on human nature leaves little options for change. 

While the following three cases might not represent all the students suffering from bullying, perhaps they can provide some insight. 

Audrie Pott was bullied by her peers, culminating in a terrible party that ultimately contributed to her suicide. She believed that illicit pictures of her were circulated around the entire school, that she would be judged for a night she could not even remember. Adrian, an anonymous boy The Falcon profiled last year, had tried to take his life multiple times before, largely the result of bullying from his circle of friends. Ruth, too, was bullied by close friends, and like the others, thought, “The entire school hated me.”

The common thread among the three was that all experienced bullying by their inner circle of friends, a double-edged sword — one edge sends the abuse; the other removes friends when the victim needs them most. For Ruth, the collective judgment she faced made her reconsider her very life.

 

RUTH IS YOUNGER THIS TIME, think 11 or 12. She’s rather chubby, straight hair placed like a mop on top of her head, and the old pictures show her smiling and flashing white teeth. 

Her flaw is her over-exuberance. She is, to some degree, even to this day, the kind of person who throws affection at people even though it might not be returned, happiness with no afterthought. 

In the sixth grade of her private school, Ruth created an account on Formspring, a site where the user receives anonymous questions. It was the first time she was overtly bullied, and she was shocked by the insults she faced: “Oh you’re so ugly put a brown bag over your head.”

“I didn’t know why they were so mean to me,” she said. “I didn’t understand … I tried to be nice to everyone, never tried to hurt anyone, so I didn’t understand why these people were trying to hurt me.”

Because her parents couldn’t afford more, Ruth wore regular skirts, sometimes even pants. Her second-hand clothes clashed with the short skirts most girls wore.

“I tried to fit in with the popular group. They didn’t like that. Because I tried,” she said. “I was different, so I was an easy target.”

Ruth liked to hold hands with people, so she was accused of being a lesbian, in typical, middle school homophobic fashion. Girls would mock: “Do you want to rub me with canola oil?”

Ruth has a remarkable repulsion for self-pity; even going over these events she is composed, matter-of-fact, almost methodical. This happened first. Then that. She is surprisingly understated, and the answers have to be coaxed from her. But she had a hard time maintaining composure when recalling the incident that made her decide to transfer to Redwood Middle School. 

One seventh-grade recess, she left for a student council meeting. When she came back, she overheard a group of girls going around, asking, “Would you be sad if Ruth died?”

“No.”

“No, we wouldn’t care.”

“Ha-ha she can die.”

“Even my best friend said no,” Ruth said. “I was speechless, I just stared, not feeling, then I tried to laugh it off. So I ran away and went to the bathroom and cried.”

Ruth left the private school, undoubtedly scarred, but still trying to remain the same, bubbly, effusive girl she was before. And for a while it worked. Eighth grade passed by with little difficulty. She entered freshman year with excitement. 

“Yeah, I was really excited,” she said. “I don’t know, I thought it would be different. Really funny in retrospect.”

 

EVERY YEAR ALL INCOMING freshmen, including Ruth, undergo a series of anti-bullying inoculations. The assemblies often repeat the same themes: be kind, reach out for help, make a difference. 

Last year, ‘13 alumnus Sasan Sadaat and others helped lead one of the most successful anti-bullying programs the school has ever seen — Speak Up for Change Week, a program unusual in that it featured student speakers. Initially cynical and skeptical, much of the audience was brought to tears by the testimonials of their peers.

“I’m proud of [Speak Up for Change Week] because [it] demonstrated the unifying experience of pain, which makes everyone feel less alone,” Sadaat told me. 

But when I asked Sadaat whether Speak Up for Change had permanently altered Saratoga culture, he gave an unexpected response. 

“That’s easy, no,” he said. “Even I didn’t change permanently from it, and it was my idea.”

The problem with assemblies, Sadaat said, is that kindness only flourishes momentarily. 

“[It’s] like when you go to a camp and you love everyone you met there, you’re all ‘bff’s,’ pics go on Facebook, you wish you didn’t have to leave camp and return home, you can’t wait to have a reunion,” Sadaat said. “That lasts a good two to four weeks, but it fades.”

“[Assemblies are] helpful for half a day,” Ruth said. “I think they have really good intentions in mind, but it just doesn’t work that way. If someone truly wants to change, it has to be from themselves, from within. No matter how much you do on the outside, if [you yourself] aren’t motivated, [it] won’t work.”

 

REFLECTING ON the physical altercation and fallout with friends, Ruth is the first to admit that she held a large part of the blame, calling herself “selfish.” But even with her mistakes, it’s hard to justify the bullying she received afterward. 

What people were hearing was being spread by a certain group of people, and Ruth said that many of the allegations were twisted, misunderstood by outsiders who formed snap judgements. 

When Ruth woke up the day after the altercation, she didn’t know how she would get through school. She was a wreck and worried her notoriety had spread. 

She was right. 

“Ha-ha I heard you punched [the friend],” peers jeered at her in class. 

“[I] literally thought everyone knew,” Ruth said. “It feels like everyone is looking at you. You feel really self-conscious — when you have no one to talk to, no friends who are willing to talk to you, you assume they hate you, as well.”

In her fifth period, she was pulled out of class and sent to a counselor’s office. She expected to see Eileen Allen, the counselor who had been helping her; instead, Ruth met a different counselor (Allen had left for a work-related conference). Because she had physically assaulted another student, she was threatened with suspension and ordered to stay away from the ex-boyfriend.

“It was psychologically damaging,” Ruth said. “Instead of helping me, asking how I was feeling, [they said] ‘This is what you should do. Don’t talk to him. Don’t associate with him.’

“They were watching me like I was some monster. [So I thought] there must be something wrong with me.”

 

IN THE FOLLOWING DAYS, Ruth fell deeper and deeper. 

Unknown assailants egged her house in the three following weekends. The first attack was nothing — she cleaned up the broken egg shells and moved on. The second attack involved eggs and grafitti: “you are a [expletive] slut,” read the green paint emblazoned onto her garage wall. But the last one was especially damaging. Assailants poured broken eggs and sand onto her mom’s car, creating a glue impossible to remove. 

“Well, first off — GENIUS,” she said. “Whoever came up with that is damn smart. It literally stuck like glue; we were so scared that it would damage the car and my mom had to drive the car to the carwash with a portion of the eggs still stuck on it. [It was] embarrassing as [expletive].”

While she speaks flippantly about it now, Ruth was deeply depressed. But somehow she survived, working through school and eating lunch alone. She said that if everyone had abandoned her, she wouldn’t have survived the dark times. 

“NO,” she shakes her head vehemently. “I wouldn’t have made it, without [the friend] and my mom. No way, no way. And God … [It was] a feeling that maybe one day would be better.”

While she no longer had suicidal thoughts, she had begun to hate the school and its culture.

In a diary, she wrote: “I don’t even know what to say. I really [expletive] up big this time. I ruined it for everyone, except the people who like to see me fall and get hurt. I can’t even talk without getting choked up, and I’ve had tears streaming down my face endlessly.

“The stupidity level of this school has reached such a high that I cannot even explain how I feel right now. I don’t even think it’s worth it anymore.”

 

COUNSELOR EILEEN ALLEN sits in her office, a bright place full of well-wishing memorabilia from students and countless college banners. Allen is one of the seven counselors and therapists at the school, three of whom were just hired through Counseling and Support Services for Youth (CASSY). The school has a sterling ratio of 350 students to one counselor, which Allen says is “pretty unheard of in California.”

In Ruth’s case, the school had to consider the safety concerns of the ex-boyfriend, whose parents had intervened and requested that Ruth no longer have any contact with their son. 

“I love working with [Ruth],” Allen told me. After the altercation, she continued to help Ruth, and Ruth told me that she greatly appreciated Allen’s counsel. 

“My goodness, she is one of my favorite adults on campus,” Ruth said. “She knows more about me than a lot of my friends, and she’s always there to answer my questions regarding anything.”

But, even so, Ruth felt that at the time she was “burdening” her counselor and her remaining friend. After a while, she started keeping her problems to herself. 

The problem is that no matter how good counselors are, sometimes they can’t be there when students need them the most — when the student is up at 3 a.m. dealing with suicidal thoughts — and they can’t be expected to, for a whole myriad of reasons from privacy to work hours. 

Common Roots, a new program led by students, looks to eliminate this disconnect. While the student counselors were extremely hesitant to release information, they told me of a recent event when Common Roots counselors discovered a suicide note on social media, talked to the student in question, and contacted the police. The police found that the student had already prepared the method of suicide when they arrived at the student’s house. 

Assistant principal Brian Safine, who declined to comment on the specifics of the case, said that “The Common Roots students are skilled in paying attention to social media sites where many students spend their off-campus hours.”

Safine said that the battle against bullying is an on-going effort. He listed, at length, multiple “small things” that improved Saratoga High’s culture, from student-athletes to section leaders in music to “staff members who meet with the at-risk, depressed students … who work to know each student by name.”

“I could go on,” he said. “But you get the idea. Growing a supportive culture for students is a year-long, staff-wide, student body-wide endeavor.”

 

THE MONTHS that followed the altercation were difficult, but Ruth had gotten over the worst stretch. Around June, she decided to change herself, to prevent something as traumatizing as that year from ever happening again. 

“I re-evaluated my friendships with many people,” she said. “Before, I considered myself friends with basically everyone I interacted with, and never questioned whether they considered me a friend in return.

“So I guess I was more careful in who I considered a ‘friend’ and decided not to trust as easily. Trying to be less naive, you could say. But I still genuinely care for everyone, I just don’t assume that they care for me in return.”

Even through all of her suffering, Ruth maintains that it was for the better. 

“No matter how much I hate to admit it, some of the things people said regarding my selfishness and what not were entirely true,” she said. “I wish it hadn’t been thrown at my face like a grenade, [but] it still helped me reflect and change myself to become a better person.”

The interview finished, she gets up and leaves. I head off in another direction, but I can’t help but be reminded by the scene in “The Breakfast Club,” when the jock, the nerd, the princess, the weirdo, and the future-convict overcome their differences and pour out their hearts to each other (albeit, fueled by cannabis). 

As high schoolers, we learn to put up so many walls around us, so that to actually have empathy for another human being becomes difficult. Like Ruth, we eventually learn not to trust, to speak out against another rather than for. We judge, because it’s so easy, because it’s our culture. 

The problem with the lens in which we combat bullying is that we assume that bullying is visible. We assume that we can tell when a classmate is being put down, that we will know when to step in and intervene. 

But so much of the time it’s subconscious and passive. Someone tells you a story about another person. In the instance you nod and say, “Wow that person’s an idiot” or, “Wow, she’s a slut,” you become one in the faceless mob, this faceless ghoul that stares at the person while she lies in bed, contemplating suicide, wondering why everyone hates her. 

Truly, the ocean of collective hate is composed of none other than a multitude of hastily formed judgments. It is a group effort: We are the cause of our culture, and we are the cause of their misery. 

Ruth had only one wish for our school. 

“…that when people said something like ‘I hate her’ to others, that people who didn’t even know me wouldn’t just agree and say ‘Same I hate her’ … It would have made me feel as though not the entire school was against me. Like there was at least some hope, or some people who wouldn’t judge.”