Twenty years later, and it still hurt.
The senior class president's invitation to a Dixie High School reunion was all it took.
"Congratulations to all of us for having survived long enough to have a 20-year class reunion," a former classmate responded. "I hope everyone has a wonderful time. But don't reserve a place for me. I have, in fact, spent most of those 20 years trying to forget the painful moments of our school days together.
"Now that I am nearly over those feelings of loneliness and shattered self-esteem, I cannot bring myself to see all of the class and run the risk of remembering all of that again."
The story, related years ago by Elder Jeffrey Holland of the LDS Church's Quorum of the Twelve, was set in the context of the Christian mandate to "love one another as I have loved you." Of that former classmate, he said, "I have wept for her and other friends like her in our youth. We were simply not the Savior's agents or disciples that he intended a group of young people to be."
Despite the fact that every major religious tradition teaches the concept of kindness and love for one's fellow beings, few girls in American society move through junior high and high school without experiencing at least some outright hostility from peers. Allegations last month that a male student was sexually harassing girls at Oquirrh Hills Middle School in the Jordan School District brought a variety of responses from fellow students and adults.
But many questions about what type of behavior among students crosses the line from acceptable to unacceptable have yet to be definitively answered by school administrators. The realm of acceptable gets even murkier when aggression is covert or ignored, as aggression among girls often is. Has the problem resulted from a moral vacuum in public schools or in lack of moral teaching at home? Or are sexual harassment, bullying and "meanness" simply more widely acknowledged and discussed?
Even Hollywood has noticed. Teen cruelty is the basis of a hit movie, "Mean Girls," released last month.
The movie is based on the best-selling book "Queen Bees and Wannabees: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and Other Realities of Adolescence," which describes the maze of social interaction that can leave some girls damaged for life. Author Rosalind Wiseman said the abuse takes place across all social classes and geographic regions, and the culprits come from families of all faith traditions as well as those with no religious backgrounds.
Speaking last week at Highland High School, Wiseman discussed the challenge of raising a "morally courageous child" in a social climate that often rewards the meanest and most aggressive of students with popularity. She told the Deseret Morning News that in addition to helping parents understand the root causes of violence and social pecking orders, she urges them to do more than simply talk about family values like integrity and kindness. Children have to see that such ethereal concepts are applicable in daily life and learn by seeing others model such behavior.
Naming the unacceptable behavior is often the first step in helping parents help their children, she said. She details the kinds of cruelty that are a daily reality for many: gossip, name-calling, shunning, intimidation, belittling. Then she asks parents to consider how their children can justify such behavior when they have been taught to be kind.
For example, "Lots of families talk about kindness and integrity, but these same people get on e-mail and totally trash each other, steal another's identity and go into chat rooms and try to get bad information about someone else." She asks parents to identify for their children the family's top three values, then draw up a specific contract that outlines how family members behave in accordance with their values.
"This family stands for integrity, kindness and responsibility, so the computer is used for homework" and other positive endeavors. Naming the behaviors it won't be used for, such as slander, is also vital, she said. The same specificity should be written into the contract about other kinds of personal interactions. She suggests all family members sign the contract in front of a religious figure or a notary and then frame it and put it on the wall in a visible family gathering place. While it seems like a simple gesture, the reinforcement gets results, she said.
Such a process seems beyond the pale for many parents who, even when presented with evidence by school officials or other parents, would rather believe their children have no part in bullying and dismiss it as a nonissue.
"I wouldn't have a job if parents of (bullies) were not in denial about it," Wiseman said. "If you get information about your kid being mean or cruel, you either feel like a failure or you deny it. Many say, 'Even if it was my kid, he doesn't like the other kid and that's the reason' it happens, justifying the cruelty."
While some of the complexity surrounding bullying includes family dynamics — "who has the most money or volunteers the most at the school" — parents in denial about bullying are often "baby boomers not wanting to be the parents they had," Wiseman said. "I've never heard a psychologist say you need to be friends with your kids," instead of being their parents, but "I see a cultural generation thing that people don't want to be like their crazy, strict parents. They see their kids as walking resumes — kids are a testament to your social success."
Parents are often threatened when they find their children are mistreating others. "We love our kids and don't want to think badly of the people we love. The problem is if that guides your behavior it's really bad parenting." Kids watch how their parents respond to challenges — and whether they're willing to acknowledge a problem or simply brush it aside.
While there is much discussion about holding children accountable at school, doing so begins with the parents, she said. Too many are "not holding kids responsible and don't want anybody else to hold them responsible either. People get very angry. It's the exceptional parent" who will take the responsibility to do something about bad behavior, she said. Too often, the parent's ego gets in the way.
"Even when kids go to church or religious school, the part that is missing a lot of times is the knowledge that 'if my mother finds out that I just did this, I'm seriously in trouble because the privilege I value the most will definitely be taken away from me.' "
The other incentive for adhering to family values is knowing that parents will find out about bad behavior. "For a 12-year-old, values are important, but consequences are concrete."
Wiseman also conducted a workshop for 30 teenage girls during her visit to the Beehive State, teaching them strategies to identify and cope with peer challenges. Teens need to confront bullying behavior by taking the offending girl aside, defining the problem and telling about the problem, rather than trying to ignore it or hoping it will go away, she said. Parents should only get involved if their child is in a serious situation beyond their ability to deal with.
Girls should be on the look-out for "fruit-cup" behavior among their peers, she said, noting a tendency by some girls to dumb-down academically or in social interactions to attract boys. Knowing parents value their intelligence makes it easier for some to avoid such behaviors.
She also tells girls that being in the "alpha" group at school is often confining in terms of wardrobe, social activities and appearance. Girls who pour their hearts and souls into the right look or the right clothes — "stereotypical femininity" — often put academics in the back seat, only to find their future depends much more on grades than looks.
Wiseman said girls who live "outside the box" are much more likely to be authentic and, ultimately, successful because their lives are not built around pleasing others. "There are true costs to being popular," she said.
Because the social costs are so pervasive, the topics are of great concern to local educators. So much so that the State Office of Education brought another "girl bullying" specialist to Utah earlier this year.
Susan Wellman, founder of the Pennsylvania-based Ophelia Project, told participants in her workshop that "being excluded from a table in the lunch room is as harmful as a slap across the face." Her goal is to change the way girls treat their peers by beginning early childhood education programs geared toward mutual respect and kindness.
Wellman started the Ophelia Project in 1997 after reading Mary Pipher's best-selling "Reviving Ophelia," which describes the "girl-poisoning culture" that Wiseman's book expands on. She believes female bullying has always been around but has grown more frequent and cruel. And the consequences aren't limited to the victim alone, she told teachers.
"When you're a bully, it impacts your soul."
E-mail: carrie@desnews.com