I recently got the opportunity to watch a documentary I had been wanting to see for a very long time. The documentary is titled “Bully” and is directed by highly acclaimed filmmaker Lee Hirsch. The movie chronicles the lives of five middle school and high school students and their daily lives in school for roughly a year. Sadly, these students were not randomly selected by the filmmaker to be the subjects of this documentary. They were chosen by the cruel hand of teenage bullying. These five students represent only a limited sampling of a larger problem in this country. These five students are the victims of bullying.

To those of you who may say, “So what? We’ve all been bullied at one point in our lives,” I say this to you: have you ever been bullied so mercilessly that you considered suicide as the only viable solution?

That question is what differentiates modern day bullying from bullying in the past. That central question has shifted the teen bullying debate from “enforcing peaceful educational environments” to saving a human life.

The stories told in “Bully” are those of students who have struggled emotionally, physically and mentally at the hands of bullies and at the hands of aloof and passive school boards. In the past decade, bullying has taken on many forms ranging from physical bullying to cyber bullying. This problem is central to every school district in every state in this country.

Tori Nakol, Billy Lucas, Angel Green, Jamarcus Bell, Braylee Rice. These are all the names of Indiana students who only recently committed suicide to escape instances of vicious gossip and physical, mental and emotional bullying. According to a recent statistic by the Center for Disease Control, 4,600 teens commit suicide annually due to varying degrees of bullying. That harrowing number is equivalent to the size of the CHS student body.

Just as many students have experienced from first grade to senior year, I have witnessed and sometimes been on the receiving end of bullying. Though what I witnessed and endured was not as severe as the torture leading to the final curtain falling on the lives of many bullied Indiana teens, it has inspired me to be more vocal on this matter. Bullying is no longer a school nuisance. It will remain a legitimate life-and-death matter until school boards, students, teachers and parents come to the realization that the list of teens lost to bully-induced suicide will not stop after Tori Nakol, Billy Lucas, Angel Green, Jamarcus Bell and Braylee Rice. So, as a human being to another human being, I ask you: Whose name is going to be next on this tragic list? Your friend? Your brother? Your sister? You?

In order to counteract the increasing number of teen suicides, we need to re-evaluate ourselves. Whether you are a school board member, student, teacher or parent there is still something you can do to improve the quality of education and the quality of life for students who otherwise would be on the receiving end of emotionally traumatizing bullying and gossip.  Be the difference. Be the voice of change. Be the stand-up person you need to be for the sake of the downtrodden.

After watching “Bully,” I felt emotionally moved. I wanted, more than anything, to mentor and guide the five bullied youth in the documentary.

Then it dawned on me: These problems are not isolated to that documentary—they exist in every school. I realized that I could be the voice of change; that I could be the difference; that I could stand up for those who have had a piece of their lives stolen from them at the hands of bullying.

And so could you.

The views in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of the HiLite staff. Reach Omeed Malek at [email protected].