11 CommentsCQA will also dedicate its weekly meeting to a discussion of LGBT bullying and harassment. The meeting begins at 2 PM in the IRC Second Floor Conference Room, 552 W. 114th Street.
A message from CQA President Sean Udell:
Within the past two weeks, six young men between the ages of 13 and 19 have died from suicide as a result of homophobic bullying:
- Asher Brown (age 13)
- Seth Walsh (age 13)
- Justin Aaberg (age 15)
- Billy Lucas (age 15)
- Tyler Clementi (age 18)
- Raymond Chase (age 19)
Students at NYU are asking that we all come together as a collective community to remember those young men as well as all of those we have lost due to hatred and bigotry. CQA and the other campus LGBT groups will be joining our NYC community members for the “You are Loved Vigil,” and we’ll travel down to Washington Square Park together.
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11 Comments
@More fundamentally The issue here is the lack of mental health/services available to teenagers. I’m more concerned by what pattern of thinking and what failings led these kids to think the only option was to end their lives. We need more awareness and more acceptance of depression as a legitimite health issue if we’re going to tackle youth suicide.
@... is suicide a problem or a symptom?
@p.j. Agree. Another issue is getting teenagers/young adults to take advantage of the mental health services that are available. I think many kids refuse to go for counseling that could help them. Is it fear of being recognized by someone they know? They would rather suffer their depression than seek help: or is that part of the depression?
@Anonymous Aaberg committed suicide in July.
Lucas did so on Sept 14th.
Neither of which is within two weeks.
@um, because that’s the point here.
@Bullied Kids get bullied all the time. Bad things happen. To make the choice to kill yourself is murder. Murdering is never justified.
@violence? while suicides are sad and bullying is bad is this really violence against gays?
@Yes Bullying is an act of verbal — and often physical — violence. Suicides as the result of verbal and physical violence is still violence, perhaps a sadder and even more lamentable kind of violence.
@maybe our definitions of violence are different but calling someone a name isn’t violent and really isn’t the cause of the kids deaths here anyway. They chose to end their lives and if anything needs to be done here it is helping kids deal with bullying.
@It is more than lamentable. But the violence of the act is not committed by the tormentors. I truly don’t see why we can’t be clear on both counts. 1) Suicide is not lynching. 2) It is not to be trivialized. These kids should have been treated with more kindness when they were alive.
@Anonymous This is awful. Those poor kids. It’s horrifying to me that this kind of shit still goes on in 2010.