Private School suicide and cyber bullying lawsuit - Latin School of Chicago

[Anonymous]

I read through the texts and the moms interactions with the school. One thing is clear-the boy was in terrible distress and neither his parents nor the school handled it appropriately. It’s tragic and im sure she regrets it but this child’s mother reported her son was acting”crazy” and she was afraid he would hurt himself and then instead of taking him to the emergency room or the ped at least she seamed to be relying on school officials to refer her to therapy-these were educated parents with means and that is NOT reasonable behavior in those circumstances. The other kids were little jerks but honestly not particularly more jerky than many boys that age. This was a perfect storm of an already troubled child, parents with bad judgment and an inept school admin.

[juanjunoz]

Anonymous wrote:Why keeps schools from creating rules about this stuff? Is it a legal issue?

When I was in school our behavior off-campus and after school was considered within the jurisdiction of school rules for certain things. Why not this?

This particular case is in Chicago and I don't know what the Illinois laws are, but in Maryland, legally, public and private schools are responsible for addressing incidents of cyberbullying, which is off-campus behavior. Grace's Law was written for a reason--cyberbullying kills. You can't say, "Oh in my day we didn't get all worked up..." No, cyberbullying didn't exist then. There's something about the degree to which electronic communication is intertwined into kids' lives and psyches that makes online harassment very dangerous.

I find it disturbing how many people on here are blaming the victim, citing his supposed lack of social skills. I think this must be a defense mechanism to make people feel like this couldn't happen to their kids. It could. Kids with great social skills get targeted as well. And they also kill themselves.

You'd think, in this day and age, professional educators would be aware of the seriousness of this, given that it's been written into the law and it is their responsibility in many states, but shockingly that is more often not the case. Even high priced private schools are gaslighting and downplaying the issue--even after a student has KILLED himself! You see the school's response, right? The school STILL doesn't get it and is trying to distance themselves from any responsibility. Losing their students isn't enough. Without lawsuits like this, how will schools ever learn to start to take this seriously?

So my PSA is for all parents to take even a single act of cyberbullying very, very seriously. If your child is being harassed online, make as much noise about it as possible. Show the school the contents of the cyber bullying laws in your state. You will be met with resistance, possibly even ridicule, but it could prevent a tragedy. Even if your child 100% could never be in danger, raising the alarm, making a big deal about it, could raise awareness and maybe save someone else's child down the line.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I read the text message strings within the first 40 pages and it’s sad..,the kids wer a little harsh but DB clearly had no social kills and no idea how to respond. A few kids even chimed in to reassure them they weren’t mad at him, that it was all love, etc. it didn’t seem that bad.

I’m heartbroken for the victim’s sister who found him. She was already having a horrible year. From the surface of the complaint, though, I don’t get why the plaintiffs are including her text messages to her mom. She does seem very socially awkward and it’s sad that other kids weren’t friendly to her, but that is different than bullying her.

For a 40k school, you’d think they’d have better mental health and socialization supports in place…at least social skills groups and lunch bunches.

To anyone experiencing anything like this with your child: please do not rely on email. Pick up the phone. Get on someone’s calendar. This is not victim blaming; just an advocacy tip. I’m a school employee and we are deluged with emails. I’m like an emergency room trailer nurse with email. The big, big ones I just can’t tackle right now…then they get buried. It’s not an excuse; just an explanation. If you’re teaching or with students all day, you’re not in front of your inbox all day. In the tiny slivers of time that you have to catch up, that’s a LOT to dump on people.

Mental health and social skills are outside things for parents to do. That's not the school responsibility.

Completely disagree. Mental health should come first in schools and in every activity involving a child; everything else, including academics and sports, should fall after that.

[Anonymous]

juanjunoz wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why keeps schools from creating rules about this stuff? Is it a legal issue?

When I was in school our behavior off-campus and after school was considered within the jurisdiction of school rules for certain things. Why not this?

This particular case is in Chicago and I don't know what the Illinois laws are, but in Maryland, legally, public and private schools are responsible for addressing incidents of cyberbullying, which is off-campus behavior. Grace's Law was written for a reason--cyberbullying kills. You can't say, "Oh in my day we didn't get all worked up..." No, cyberbullying didn't exist then. There's something about the degree to which electronic communication is intertwined into kids' lives and psyches that makes online harassment very dangerous.

I find it disturbing how many people on here are blaming the victim, citing his supposed lack of social skills. I think this must be a defense mechanism to make people feel like this couldn't happen to their kids. It could. Kids with great social skills get targeted as well. And they also kill themselves.

You'd think, in this day and age, professional educators would be aware of the seriousness of this, given that it's been written into the law and it is their responsibility in many states, but shockingly that is more often not the case. Even high priced private schools are gaslighting and downplaying the issue--even after a student has KILLED himself! You see the school's response, right? The school STILL doesn't get it and is trying to distance themselves from any responsibility. Losing their students isn't enough. Without lawsuits like this, how will schools ever learn to start to take this seriously?

So my PSA is for all parents to take even a single act of cyberbullying very, very seriously. If your child is being harassed online, make as much noise about it as possible. Show the school the contents of the cyber bullying laws in your state. You will be met with resistance, possibly even ridicule, but it could prevent a tragedy. Even if your child 100% could never be in danger, raising the alarm, making a big deal about it, could raise awareness and maybe save someone

else's child down the line.

Also make a lot of noise if the school is engaging in bullying. I have noticed that schools attempt to get their stories straight when parents question the behavior of teachers. Document document document.

[Anonymous]

I will say as an alum of Latin that this is not new. Disregard for disenfranchised students has been going on for 25 years and likely longer. Latin, as someone pointed out, has many (but not a majority) of families that have a lot of money and I will add they expect things to go their way either by dint of their donations or the prospect of their donation. If their kids are bullying others, many parents will defend their bullying children reflexively as opposed to getting the full picture. Some of these families explicitly expect an Ivy League acceptance as part of the return on investment, even though it's not really up to Latin.

For DCUM, I'm going to say something controversial: Latin has more money in terms of overall net worth of their families than any school in DC. It's not NYC prep school level, but it is close.

The calculus for the school is skewed because of something I called "money derangement syndrome" or to paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald "the rich are different than the rest of us." The administration hasn't handled their families very well ever, because they don't really understand the incentives of these hyper-wealthy families.

The school will need to have a reckoning with its hyper-wealthy section of its clientele, but my prediction is that the administration are too scared for their careers to have that reckoning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am wondering if OP expected more compassion from this forum. That doesn’t pay here. Better to lower your expectations.

dcum is anti-compassionate. Worst place to go for this sort of thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is horribly sad and hits close to home as my younger kid is dealing with this right now at school and I don't know what to do. The meanest kids are the ones with the loudest parents who are gossipy and involved in socially engineering their children's social lives. We're going to see a therapist starting next week to help our son and ourselves through this issue.

Why don’t people talk about what a real issue this is? The social engineering. The targeting. It’s almost like it’s hush-hush and no school wants to touch it with a 10 foot pole

This!! I have a question which schools have a very strong anti-bullying policy in DC/Maryland area?

None.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Neglect their kids is more common, especially the busy important types.

It’s both. And what little the kids see of the parents is mean-“kid” behavior. So they just model what they see.

[Anonymous]

If I have information that could help the Bronstein family in their case who would I contact

[Anonymous]

juanjunoz wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why keeps schools from creating rules about this stuff? Is it a legal issue?

When I was in school our behavior off-campus and after school was considered within the jurisdiction of school rules for certain things. Why not this?

This particular case is in Chicago and I don't know what the Illinois laws are, but in Maryland, legally, public and private schools are responsible for addressing incidents of cyberbullying, which is off-campus behavior. Grace's Law was written for a reason--cyberbullying kills. You can't say, "Oh in my day we didn't get all worked up..." No, cyberbullying didn't exist then. There's something about the degree to which electronic communication is intertwined into kids' lives and psyches that makes online harassment very dangerous.

I find it disturbing how many people on here are blaming the victim, citing his supposed lack of social skills. I think this must be a defense mechanism to make people feel like this couldn't happen to their kids. It could. Kids with great social skills get targeted as well. And they also kill themselves.

You'd think, in this day and age, professional educators would be aware of the seriousness of this, given that it's been written into the law and it is their responsibility in many states, but shockingly that is more often not the case. Even high priced private schools are gaslighting and downplaying the issue--even after a student has KILLED himself! You see the school's response, right? The school STILL doesn't get it and is trying to distance themselves from any responsibility. Losing their students isn't enough. Without lawsuits like this, how will schools ever learn to start to take this seriously?

So my PSA is for all parents to take even a single act of cyberbullying very, very seriously. If your child is being harassed online, make as much noise about it as possible. Show the school the contents of the cyber bullying laws in your state. You will be met with resistance, possibly even ridicule, but it could prevent a tragedy. Even if your child 100% could never be in danger, raising the alarm, making a big deal about it, could raise awareness and maybe save someone else's child down the line.

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Half the people responding here have bullies for kids weather they know it or not and then deny it. That’s the problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Half the people responding here have bullies for kids weather they know it or not and then deny it. That’s the problem.

In an average private, how much bullying is there? Do all publics and all privates have kids where the majority send texts like the ones sent by the basketball team?

[Anonymous]

[img]

Anonymous wrote:If I have information that could help the Bronstein family in their case who would I contact

If you view the complaint, their lawyers/law firm representing them is named. Contact them.

The whole text thread with the basketball team is very weird. I assume they got it from John Doe. A couple of the kids are very mean, but if the underlying allegations are true (joined L’s JV basketball team, played terrible in a game against P, then got injured, sat with P players at next game & posted something pro-P on FB), then I don’t think most of the kids are that outside of the realm of expected behavior and a few are actively trying to reign it back in. I don’t actually think anything on that thread — without more — is bullying per se. Now the death threats we can’t see & telling him to kill himself? Totally different. But the behavior described towards the sister actually seems worse than the text thread from my vantage point. I do wonder what was going on though really… Was this all set up by the neighbor he thought was his friend and that’s why they all initially decided to torture this kid? Was it really because he came from a rival school? The sister is even weirder in some ways, because she’s starting in a normal matriculation year; there should have been lots of new kids her year. Why were these particular kids tortured so much?