January Nonfiction Blog Post

January Nonfiction Blog Post

            This week, I read “On Staten Island, Relentless Bullying Is Blamed for a Teenage Girl’s Suicide” by Vivian Yee. It talked about how 15-year old Felicia Garcia committed suicide, perhaps because of bullying from the football team. Felicia lived in the foster care system, and had a prior history of being a “rebellious” teenager. However, she’d seemed fine before she committed suicide, apart from crying in the hallways once a few days before her suicide. The football team tweeted defenses, saying they barely knew Felicia. I think that the football team’s response using social media was definitely not the right decision to make.

            Social media and the Internet have literally been taking over the world. Bullying has even taken a completely different form through technology- cyber bullying. I think defending yourself after someone has committed suicide is by itself, a selfish thing to do, you can at least show respect for the person and have a moment to reflect on what their lives were like, and not immediately think about how they will “get in trouble” for it.  So not only do I think it was wrong for the football team to defend themselves so quickly, but I think it was a really bad idea for them to use the internet to do it. People read things differently on the Internet than how the writer intended them to be read, and while the football team may not have intended for their comments to sound selfish, they did. I think if there was any way for them to defend themselves, it should have been done in an interview, or a press conference if absolutely necessary. They brought it upon themselves to defend themselves, when no one had asked them to, and they didn’t need to. Perhaps if they’d waited until they’d been questioned, this situation wouldn’t have happened.

            In conclusion, I think that this football team made the wrong decision when they decided to write a comment on Twitter about Felicia’s suicide. I wish things like this didn’t happen, and that bullying could be less of an issue in our society. It’s something we really don’t need and that could easily be avoided. Maybe then horrible things like this wouldn’t happen so often. My thoughts go out to Felicia’s friends and family.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/nyregion/suicide-of-staten-island-girl-is-blamed-on-bullying.html?ref=bullies&_r=0