OH HAI DIS IZ DUH INTARWEBZ

I could have dealt with my resentment over having to take a universally mandatory 3-credit class that is, believe it or not, an introduction to using the Internet. And I'm resigned to the over-crowded classrooms where there are always more students than there are seats and it's musical chairs over who gets a seat at a table and who has to drag in a chair from the Student Center and squeeze into the back. But what I CAN'T NOT EXPLODE OVER is an over-crowded, mandatory, kindergarden-level computer class where approximately half of the classroom's computers don't work. Have you ever had to share a chained down laptop with a stranger for 8 hours because the one in front of you is non-functional? With the arm of that person's chair jabbing you in the ribs all day? I left in a VERY bad mood yesterday, and I have to do this for three more 8-hour Saturdays.

I don't know where along the line there was confusion, but what I thought I was signing up for was an introduction to programming and web production, which would have actually been useful. Yesterday we were taught what a URL is, and that websites like Wikipedia exist. Oh, and we learned what a search engine does. And golly gosh, now I know who Steve Jobs is! Judging strictly from faces, I am probably the oldest person in this class, and I am damn sure there was not one web-illiterate person in the class. This is just a waste of time and money for everyone, but the add-drop period is long over. I'm stuck with it.

Next week I will bring my own laptop, and arrive early to secure a place next to a power outlet. I very much hope I don't have to share it with anyone, but that's probably wishing for too much.

It Gets Better...But It Needs To Get To More Immediate Levels of Better, Soon

I've been wanting to write this post for a while, and this may be my last chance before things get very busy, so here goes. Sorry, I'm not going to cut for length on this one. Scroll past if it's too long.

First, let me start by saying that I fully and whole-heartedly support the It Gets Better Project and I hope you do, too. If you're not familiar with it, please take a moment to visit the site before continuing here. It is a video outreach project aimed at preventing suicide or self-harm in LGBT and perceived-LGBT young people who are enduring bullying. I'm certain it has already saved lives and I hope it continues to do so. It is a wonderful initiative and I'm glad action is beginning in this direction. Please support the It Gets Better Project.

That said, it is only the very beginning. Much, much more awareness and action needs to follow. The problem of adolescent and teen bullying isn't nearly addressed or dealt with yet, and assuring victims that it gets better is only the first small step.

When you're a 13-year-old with a face bloodied by your classmates and you're laying fetal on the floor in a circle of kicking feet, knowledge that this problem is going to go away in your 20s is not a done-deal solution. When you're a girl who has had her halter top ripped off her body in a cafeteria full of 200 middle-schoolers (it happened to me), most young people simply can't be so forward-focused as to take comfort in the fact that they only have five more years of assaults like this left. If you're gay, lesbian, fat, disabled, the wrong color, the wrong religion, the wrong person's ex, too homely, too pretty, too brainy, or for whatever reason your peers choose to attempt to destroy your life, you are being asked to endure something that virtually no adult in modern society is without legal recourse from.

I and millions like me remember the blind eye that was turned by adults in school, and in some cases even by parents. I remember screaming out for Mrs. Kaminsky's help as a group of girls held my arms while the strongest girl smashed fist after fist in my face, and how Mrs. Kaminsky looked on for a moment, shook her head and smiled, and turned her back. I recall the ridiculous "mediation" sessions with guidance councelors, where my attackers accused me of making it all up, where we were forced to shake hands and pledge friendship and march out the door, when minutes later I would be slammed face first into a wall again. There were days when I would come home with 5 wads of bubble gum ground into my hair, and my mother (who had never been bullied) imploring "Try to find out what you're doing to bring this upon yourself." I don't need to go on. As I say, I am one of millions. Maybe you are, too.

Now imagine being asked to endure assaults like these as an adult. Imagine being told to just try to ignore it. To hang in there. Picture yourself, as an adult in your workplace, dragged from your desk by four colleagues and beaten onto your knees while the whole office laughed.

Then as now, what I see almost none of is accountability. I see bully-coddling, and I see young victims asked to knuckle-under and tolerate them. I have read the claim many times that all bullies are bullies because they themselves are victims. This is absolutely not true in every case. I have seen and known bullies from wonderful families, with every advantage a young person could have, who went on to good colleges and paid no price whatsoever for their crimes. And even in cases where something is wrong at home, freedom to destroy another young person's life as part of "acting out" should not be the entitlement it is now.

For the sake of every young person living in terror at the hands of bullies, I want to see changes in juvenile law that bring accountability for bullying much further in line with the accountability adults bear. A young person should not, for any reason real or projected, have the right to assault, torture or persecute a a fellow young person. And no young person should have to settle for the knowledge that it gets better in the future if only they're willing to put up with the assaults now. It's a start, but it's not enough.

It gets better, and former bullying victims are reaching out to spread the message to today's young victims. But we can't brush off our hands and consider the problem solved right there. Attitudes and laws need to change, so that bullying is no longer regarded as a rite of passage, or simple mischief, or a release of youthful stress, but as the genuine criminal act that it is.

It will only truly get better when we make it so.