Photo: Ian Fairclough / Valley Bureau
When 12th grader David Shepherd and Travis Price saw another student bullied for wearing a pink shirt, they decided that enough is enough and got a bunch of students to come to school wearing pink!
The Grade 9 student arrived for the first day of school last Wednesday and was set upon by a group of six to 10 older students who mocked him, called him a homosexual for wearing pink and threatened to beat him up.
The next day, Grade 12 students David Shepherd and Travis Price decided something had to be done about bullying. "It’s my last year. I’ve stood around too long and I wanted to do something," said David.
They used the Internet to encourage people to wear pink and bought 75 pink tank tops for male students to wear. They handed out the shirts in the lobby before class last Friday — even the bullied student had one. [...]
They also brought a pink basketball to school as well as pink material for headbands and arm bands. David and Travis figure about half the school’s 830 students wore pink. [...]
"The bullies got angry," said Travis. "One guy was throwing chairs (in the cafeteria). We’re glad we got the response we wanted."
David said one of the bullies angrily asked him whether he knew pink on a male was a symbol of homosexuality. He told the bully that didn’t matter to him and shouldn’t to anyone.
Then again, I'm slightly color-blind, so pink is just another gray to me. From my perspective, I'm seeing these bullies jumping around in terror and attacking people over... nothing at all. If they weren't victimizing people, it would be weirdly funny.
You're the idiot - these two guys are wonderful human beings.
REAL men wear pink! :D
Oh and by the way, I'm Alpaca the Awesome. I heard about this site from say no to crack and tacky raccoons.
How amazing that there are people like those two students. Good for them for sticking up for somebody -without- resorting to brainless violence (gosh, imagine, problems can be solved without grunting caveman tactics? Who'd have thunk it?) I hope they both go very far in life.
in all seriousness - parents, please talk to your kids about bullying and being bullied. i was way to embarassed to tell my parents that the other kids thought i was a "lesbo".
good job boys!!
Humiliation doesn't solve the problem. Now the bullies will wait until that kid's alone and pound him for it.
Lovely band-aid solution.
I never spent one single penny in Canada again and I would recommend that no American ever spend any money with those homophobic, racist people. They had horrible manners, were extremely aggressive to tourists and the absolute most ill-mannered people I've ever met on this planet, far ruder than New Yorkers or Parisians.
Apparently Western Canada is not as scummy. The Maritimes however are an embarassment to North America.
I can't believe how stupid those bullies are. Some of the toughest guys I knew in high school wore pink polo's on occasion.
Anyone that threatened by homosexuality is definitely insecure in their own masculinity.
It's really just another type of cowardly behaviour, like racism and fear of the unknown (monsters under the bed?) A sign of personal weakness, like all gang behaviour.
DC-I'm sorry and embarassed for what happened to your family in my country. We are a country 10% the size of the USA with 10% of the same sort of idiots, and they tend to live and congregate in smaller De'iverance type communities, just like in the USA. Most of us are pretty good people.
Please learn to stop being so sensitive. And biased. (DCer - I'm lookin' at you. I'm fairly certain the majority of the large cities in the maritimes have a Pride Week with things like gay pride parades and Drag Queen Races, we're not only accepting, we're enthusiastic).
In both the High Schools I've been to boys made a statement BY wearing pink. Notoriously straight boys wore pink shirts with the slogan PINK IS THE NEW BLACK.
... it's not a big deal.
I think what these guys did was great. I wish we'd had the older kids stick up for us when my class started high school. We were taunted from the first day... just because of what grade we were in. Like we could help that! It just goes to show that bullies are dumb... no matter what the reason for the bullying.
i think this was handled perfectly.
We all have bad experiences at some point. Rude behaviour does not have geographic boundaries.
nevre in my 4 years have i been bullied or have i seen others being bullied, and its not like im mr. popular either
ill take it even further, in my 10 or so years in public schools, ive never once seen the cliche bully
i dont think they exist
and i agree with Joh, pink isnt a big deal, everybody wears it.
Oh, and - I love my dead, gay son!!
My "naive" comment was posted before yours was there (probably because yours was awaiting review). Don't look to me for solutions, jodie. Find your own.
People who bully others will do so for any excuse. You need to find out why they're doing it, and stop it, not just exacerbate a situation.
This just looks like people patting themselves on the back for a job well done, even though the bullies are still there, getting madder.
Hopefully these kids will continue to back up their show of support, and not leave their pink-shirt poster child out to dry next week. Otherwise, they've put an even bigger target on his back.
Why can't you call a good story a good story and fkawf with with the pessimism?
I simply stated my opinion. This "feel-good" story does nothing to address the underlying problem.
The bullies in this story threw chairs around a cafeteria. Doesn't sound like they've changed to me. Just sounds like they're madder.
You told me to "fkawf". Are you trying to bully me into agreeing with you?