Amanda Cummings? No! Just another Tragic Tale of Tormented & Bullied High School Teen Who Took Her Own Life:
By Marc Chamot
Enough is enough! Another precious one was lost to bullying.
After Columbine, I thought schools were getting the message about bullies and their bullying, but apparently not.
You know, there is one thing that bothers me the most, it is bullies. I can’t stand them. I was bullied in high school, I was bullied in private schools and I was bullied in the U.S. service. I know how these poor kids felt and especially Amanda Cummings.
When we hear of a wonderful children, a teenage child, and a very sweet defenseless female like Amanda, who cannot live this life, they deserve or in this world because of constant bullying, it breaks my heart.
After the very tragic Phoebe Prince suicide a few years ago, Massachusetts got their act together and got tougher on school bullies.
Massachusetts came up with one of the strictest anti-bully laws in the nation, because of the death of Phoebe Prince.
Prince had moved from Ireland to South Hadley, Massachusetts.[3] Her suicide, after suffering months of bullying from school classmates, brought international attention to the problem of bullying in US schools. In March 2010, a state anti-bullying task force was set up as a result of her death. The Massachusetts legislation was signed into law on May 3, 2010.[2]
The trial for those accused in the case occurred in 2011, with pre-trial hearings beginning on September 15, 2010.[4][5] Sentences of probation and community service were handed down after guilty pleas on May 5, 2011.[6]”
And now, New Yorkers have to live with the consequences of bullies and bullying that is going on in their schools.
Amanda Cummings, a sophomore at New Dorp High School, wrote Facebook messages in the weeks before her death that her relatives said showed a distressed girl crying out for help. Cummings died Monday from injuries sustained in the bus crash on Dec. 27.
Her uncle, Keith Cummings, told ABC-owned station WABC that bullying contributed to her suicide.
"Amanda begged her mother not to say anything for the simple fact that she'd be picked on more, or they'd make fun of her more," Cummings said.
He said that girls at Cummings' high school had been tormenting Amanda, and continued to leave inappropriate comments on her Facebook profile even as she lay in a coma at Staten Island University Hospital.
The bullying was apparently never reported to the school. New Dorp High School did not immediately return calls from ABC News seeking comment about Cummings' case or its bullying policies.
The note found in Cummings' pocket after the crash, according to her relatives, spoke of a failed relationship with a boyfriend, which family members believe added to the girl's stress. In the note, Cummings said, according to her relatives, that she could not live without the boyfriend.
The New York Police Department confirmed that a note was found on Cummings at the time of the crash, but would not comment on its contents nor on the accusations of bullying in Cummings' death.
In the weeks and months leading up to her death, Cummings repeatedly expressed her unhappiness on her Facebook profile, saying she felt alone and sick of her life, and that she wanted to die.
"I'll just go f**k myself, just like u said baby, then I’ll go kill myself, with these pills, this knife, this life has already done half the job. -___-," she wrote in early December. The messages of despair stretched back at least to September.”
Cummings' suicide is the latest in a string of recent youth suicides, including those of Massachusetts high school student Phoebe Prince and Rutgers University freshmen Tyler Clementi, who was bullied for his romantic encounter with another man. Prince hanged her-self in a closet, and Clementi jumped of the George Washington Bridge in New York, bringing widespread outcry for schools to crack down on bullying.
Since Clementi's death, New Jersey has lead states around the country to enact tougher anti-bullying programs, including stricter punishments and better preventative education, in school districts.
Change is coming, and the tables are being turned on bullies, however, it is too slow in coming. Whatever they do! Bullies need to go to jail!
I will tell you the real truths my friends. In junior high or high school, majority of bullies were the jocks. Mainly football player jocks; they were the ones that bullied people at my high schools.
You see folks, the reasons schools don’t want to get tough on bullies, it means going after their highly prized and better than anyone else, jocks, which are above the laws and school regulations and rules.
Jocks can get virtually away with rapes and other crimes towards people, just because they are the big stars of their football programs.
Because, it also means punishing your star quarterbacks, your star wide receiver, your star defensive linesman, and the thoughts of losing city championships, or state championships, and even losing your star cheer leaders, who are partners in crimes with the jocks, who contribute as active bullies in schools.
In the U.S military, a shameful and racist circumstances of events occurred, when Eight U.S. soldiers are being charged, over death of 'racially-bullied' teenage Asian-American who 'committed suicide' on duty in Afghanistan.
I was bullied in the service and made it alive, unfortunately for Private Danny Chen, he didn’t.
Eight U.S. Army soldiers have been charged over the death of an Asian-American soldier in Afghanistan who was allegedly severely racially bullied.
Private Danny Chen, 19, of New York, was found dead in a guard tower at Combat Outpost Palace on October 3 after apparently committing suicide.
The Army described Private Chen as having ‘an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound’ when found in southern Afghanistan's Kandahar province.
But it is now no longer clear whether Private Chen, who was from the Chinatown area of Manhattan, did in fact take his own life.
The eight soldiers from his company face charges ranging from dereliction of duty, assault, negligent homicide and involuntary manslaughter.”
How on earth can we attract Asian Chinese Americans in the service, when they are bullied this way?