Rosalind Wiseman

After an incident like the gruesome, frightening assault of a 15-year-old at Richmond High School in Richmond, CA on Saturday, we usually have a moment of wondering how a group of people could watch such a terrible thing happen to someone and not do anything about it.

But our reasonably horrible reaction is mostly a fleeting one—we think about it for the moment it comes up on the news, then tell ourselves the things that one usually thinks to rationalize fear or outrage over an extreme situation. Like:

“Richmond is one of the worst public schools in the country, that would never happen where I live.”

“My kid doesn’t look like that kid. And my kid would never just stand there if something like that happened. Those kids don’t have enough resources and they weren’t raised in a caring community like ours.”

But I’d like to challenge you to actually sit longer with the discomfort that comes from thinking about a situation like this. While it may be true that the overwhelming majority of kids in our country will make it through high school never having to witness an extreme incident like a gang rape behind their school, this needs to be a starting place for discussion about what a person does when faced with a situation where they are a witness to degradation and cruelty.

For the revised edition of my book, Queen Bees & Wannabes, I spoke to hundreds of teenagers from around the country. I spent a great deal of time in my research having discussions with boys and girls from great communities around the country with good schools, ample resources, and involved parents. Yet still, the overwhelming response, from boys in particular, to the question of in what situation they’d seek help if they or someone else was being harassed or demeaned was that someone would need “be sexually assaulted or their life was in danger” before they’d reach out to an adult.

Regardless of socioeconomic status, the less you trust the adults around you, the more likely it would be that you would never break your silence. Your distrust will contribute to the paralysis in the moment, and by the time someone is in physical danger, it’s usually too late. We have to challenge ourselves, and our young people, to speak out when it will actually make a difference. It’s not enough to simply assume that the kids we know will never be put in a position to have to make a decision to stand by or to act.

So how do you talk to kids about what it means to be a bystander, especially when the wrongdoing they will witness is likely to be a lot more subtle?

For high school teachers and parents, I’d absolutely use the Richmond High School incident as a starting place for discussion to get kids to a place where they can talk about what kind of situation is relatable in their own lives.

Teachers: ask your students to anonymously write down a time when they experienced or observed degradation or cruelty where they hoped someone could have intervened but no one did. Collect their responses, then use one or two examples as a way to help them strategize.

• What would the reasons be that people would not come forward?
• How can we get past that?
• Who are adults that the students feel they can trust, meaning they would handle it well if you needed to talk something through?

The goal is for students to figure out who their best resources are before they are faced with a problem.

Parents: You can begin by telling your kid that you saw an article about this terrible thing that happened, and even though it probably won’t be something they’ll experience, it made you think about the larger issue of what it means to be a bystander.

• Tell them you know it might not seem like a big deal now, but have they seen people do something to each other where they wished they had help or didn’t know what to do?
• What would be the reason that they would not go for help?
• Make sure you also articulate to your kid that you realize that when they are in a tough situation that they might not choose to reach out to their parent. Advocate that they think through other adults they could trust if they needed to figure out a problem that seems bigger than them.

Exercising “negative loyalty” is the having power to silence people when your actions warrant being called out. Unfortunately for most of us this kind of loyalty in relationships usually wins against what true loyalty is—being able to tell someone, even a very close friend, that they are really out of line and need to stop. The definition of what it means to be loyal in our culture is manipulated so that we think we can’t speak out in order to protect people.

This is why it’s so important to talk to kids honestly about being able to act in situations in a way that is not based not on one’s connection, like, or dislike of the perpetrator or target. No matter who is involved, when someone is being humiliated or their physical safety is in danger, our children and students need to know hear that we expect them to be the type of people who will act instead of wonder later why they did nothing.

The costs are high when you speak out—people don’t always thank you and you certainly won’t be a hero. But you will have more control over your own life and know that other people’s actions don’t determine what you do. It may seem like silence keeps you safer, under the radar, less likely to be a victim. But the cost of your silence is actually very high. When you choose say nothing, you have to look in the mirror and acknowledge that “not wanting to get involved” or “make a bigger deal out of it” or “rat out my friend” came at the price of someone else’s dignity and your own.

Do you want to be the kind of person that can live with that?