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I'm going to have to make some changes to Raven Days. I want to continue updating it, but I need to shrink it somehow so I'll be able to keep up with the workload. I've been away for months; I expect to be away again from December 2010 to March or April 2011. After that I should, God willing, be back to a regular schedule. But at the moment I have hundreds of potential links staring me in the face. I'm going to start updating with August 2010 links and work backwards, while still trying to keep up with current links.
Anyhow, just as I ditched the alternative-schooling section a few years ago, I'm going to have to jettison some more sections to keep the heart of the site, as I see it, afloat. The easiest cut is the cyberbullying section. Cyberbullying was news when I first launched it, around the time the term was coined. These days, cyberbullying is just a fact of life. I'll continue to mention cyberbullying news articles that meet Raven Days' other criteria, but I'm going to stop linking to all these endless "Yes, parents, kids can bully each other over the Internet!" articles. I'm also getting rid of the Governmental Initiatives links; other sites are doing a much better job of keeping up with the status of anti-bullying legislation.
A harder thing to take out, since it's been part of the site from the beginning, is sports hazing. But I think I need to drop it. I'm not minimizing hazing. It's a terrible thing. But so is elementary-school bullying, and I don't cover it either. Hazing scandals in sports teams generate huge numbers of news articles, and they're not really what I started the site to write about. Often, though not always, they are a group experience in which several younger students are victimized together by older teammates. My site, in essence, is about the bullying of individuals. Sometimes a "hazing" seems to me more like bullying than hazing, even if it did happen in a sports setting; I may still link to incidents like that in RFHS.
I've begun updating the site regularly again, but it will take me quite a while to go back and add the articles I've missed. I'll do my best. The bad news is that I'll be away from the Net and my Raven Days files from December 2010 to March 2011, so the site will have another hiatus soon. At least I'll be here for the fall semester..
In the past few years, there's been much talk about "safer schools". In the name of "safer schools", some students have been required to start carrying see-through backpacks. Others have had to put up with having their lockers searched, or with being searched themselves. Now, in the wake of the recent school shootings, kids are being encouraged to inform teachers and parents about any classmates they have suspicions about, anyone who doesn't "fit in".
The irony here is that, for a few students in every school, school is as unsafe as it can be. These students are regularly attacked by their classmates, physically as well as psychologically. Many are hit or kicked every day of the school year. Not only do the much-publicized "safer schools" programs do nothing to help such students; they can actually harm them, by adding a veneer of legitimacy to their classmates' attacks. When outsiders are seen (wrongly, in almost all cases) as threats to the average student, there is even more motivation for classmates, teachers and administrators to harass them.
And the situation is already bad enough. Outsiders have been hunted through our schools for at least a quarter-century now. The problem isn't limited to inner-city schools, or to large schools, or even to public schools. Because they are so greatly outnumbered at their own schools, the victims of constant bullying often feel that their situation is unique. Because society tends to blame the victims of school bullying, those victims are reluctant to speak out. The result is a conspiracy of silence.
Current victims believe themselves to be alone, and may come to buy into the myth that they deserve what's happening to them. Survivors may believe the same thing; buy into the same myth. Most survivors of constant attacks by classmates are quiet about that fact as adults. Yet such survival exacts a price; four to six years in Hell cannot easily be forgotten. Some survivors are left with physical scars. All are scarred psychologically.
Schools should truly be safe for all their students. Someday perhaps they will be. But as long as they are not, there need to be places where current and former outsiders can gather, for support in dealing with the status quo, and for help in changing it. That is why Raven Days was created.
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All original material on the Raven Days website, except the material appearing in the sections Words Out of Shadow and Lighting the Way, © 1999-2010 by its creator and maintainer, Meredith Minter Dixon.. Copyright to the articles in the sectionsWords Out of Shadow and Lighting the Way is retained by their authors. Counter: 9112