The Rural School Poised to End Bullying
PITTSFIELD, N.H. — “I literally hate you. You’re a round cereal box.”
By the time these words got back to 14-year-old Tori, the Snapchat image they went with—of her from behind as she took notes in biology class—had long disappeared. But a screenshot lingered, got passed around, and soon kids were saying, “Hey, cereal box,” as they passed Tori in the hallway.
Tori recognized herself, of course. Her hair was neatly divided into two braids, and she was in her usual seat in her ninth-grade classroom at Pittsfield Middle High School in rural New Hampshire.
Her first impulse had been to laugh. What does that even mean, “a round cereal box”? But then the insult started to sting. Was it a reference to her petite size, she wondered, or the muscles she has built up through years of competitive team sports? The words—“I literally hate you”—leapt off the screen.
“If you have a problem and you hate me, just tell me,” says Tori now. (She asked that her full name be withheld because of online harassment she experienced after the Snapchat incident.) “Why do you have to tell the whole world?”
To some, this might sound like little more than classic behavior, as immortalized in the 2004 cult teen flick, but it can include mean boys, too.
