THUNDER BAY -- The methods may have changed a little, but the Mean Girls script continues to play out in Thunder Bay high school hallways.
St. Patrick High School is no different, says 16-year-old Jayann Walsh, who actually switched elementary schools because of bullying.
On Wednesday, those memories hit home, after she and dozens of her classmates watched Finding Kind, a 77-minute documentary on the cruelty school girls can inflict on each other, often without knowing how hurtful their words and actions are.
“I understood a lot of the video,” Walsh said.
“It’s just amazing how rude girls are to each other.”
While both boys and girls can be bullied and be bullies, the approach is different, she went on to say.
“Boys do it too, but they get in a fight and then two minutes later they’re best friends again. Girls drag it on for months and months and months.”
Walsh believes she was bullied as a youngster because of who she chose to hang out with. Her best friend was a boy and she became friends with all his guy friends.
That didn’t sit well with some of the girls in her elementary school class.
“A girl would walk by me and she would always kick my chair, give me dirty looks and call me a whore or a slut,” Walsh said.
“I knew myself that I’m not like that. But it starts rumours and the next thing you know one person is talking about it and then another person is talking about it and then everyone believes it, even though it’s a rumour.”
Walsh’s friend Breanne Brodeur, also 16, said she too could relate. She grew up in British Columbia and after her family moved to Thunder Bay, her former classmates began spreading rumours about her, which to her credit, she tried to ignore.
She’s hoping girls at St. Patrick High School took the Finding Kind message to heart and take a long look at how they treat others.
There was one scene in the film that made a particular impact on her.
“There was a little girl who was nine-years-old in the video who came home and told her mom, ‘Oh I want to kill myself.’ She’s a nine-year-old girl. That is so hard to see her want to kill herself.”
The screening of the American-made film was awarded to Confederation College’s child and youth worker program, who brought the documentary and an anti-bullying, pro-kindness presentation to the Selkirk Street High School.
Students, after seeing the film, were encouraged to sign a pledge to commit to kindness and to write anonymous apologies to someone they may have bullied in the past.
Taera Deschamps, a third-year student at the college, said the movement has made its way through the United States and is starting to make an impact north of the border.
“The campaign is not putting the blame on bullies,” said Deschamps, who acknowledged the advent of the Internet has made school-yard bullying even more of an issue.
“It’s putting the focus on being kind to one another and being able to reflect on that you may have done some bullying yourself and you may have also been impacted by bullying. It’s a lot of self-reflection and being able to realize that sometimes you can say things you might not want to say, and instead to say something that nice instead.”
The impact of negative words, which only take seconds to say, can last a lifetime, she added.
