Highschool: referred to by some as the best years of their life & by others as the worst. No matter how you viewed it highschool had an impact on you one way or another. Throughout our 4 years in highschool we mature and grow. The events that take place throughout these years impact us for the rest of our lives. For me, it was the start of something that I will now life with forever. When a parent sends their child to school all they hope for is to have piece of mind that they will be taken care of. The teachers and administrators we see 5 days a week consistently have huge impacts on us. They see us mature and grow up into teenagers to young adults. All a parent can hope for is that these faculty members love and care for their children as much as they do. They have high hopes that the counselors create a safe space and that if any problems arise the school will get control. You would think for someone who went to a small school these hopes would be fulfilled without question. Every teacher, administrator, janitor, and even lunch ladies know each student by name and vise versa. With less kids in the building each student is paid more closet attention to, atleast that's the hope. However, this is not always the case. As you can imagine news in a small school travels rather quickly and the faculty usually hears about drama or anything like that within a week maximum. Now what they chose to do about it is a completely different story. So this is my open letter to you highschool and the so many ways you let me down. You failed to provide the basic necessities to allow me to become the young adult I wanted to be. The education was fabulous that is not the issue. It was the safety and stability of my mental health you stopped the ball on. I was a teenager who was very much influenced by the events that took place at my highschool. Everyone deals with bullying at some point in their life. High schools do their best to enforce rules in order to prevent these things from happening. Obviously you can't prevent them all so when a situation does slip through the cracks it is my belief that the school is responsible for handling it. My personal experience began when a student decided they wanted to hurt me. So they started a horrible rumor in order to achieve their goal. Having sibilings at the school it didn't take long for me to find out what was being said about me throughout the school. After many discussions with my parents they decided to inform the school and their response was that they were unable to do anything without proof. As the rumors and hatred got worse and continued I had people confronting me and sending me screenshots of texts of people discussing this made up story about something going on in my life. I kept them all and stored it away hoping that one day it would just stop. Until my mom started to notice changes in me and my behavior and my body language and mannerisms. Her and my dad gathered all the proof we had of these vicious rumors that were being spread and overdramatized. They immediately set up a meeting with the administration in an attempt to shut these rumors down. Their daughter was being defeated and they just wanted it to stop. They wanted their little girl to be happy again. They brought in papers and screenshots and multiple forms of proof hoping that the administration would do something about it this time. In their meeting it was admitted by a faculty member that they were aware of the rumor being spread about me because they “heard girls talking about it". Yet they did nothing to interfere with the rumor that was being spread right infringement of their eyes. How can a school preach how great and religious they are when they have people on their faculty who don't interfere with the bullying that goes on every single day. Being an athlete, I played multiple sports in highschool. These rumors made their way onto the field/court and the coaches are well aware of the situation at hand. One coach even talked bad about me to another player. That is not right at all. They're a coach they should be building a team up and working on improving the connection between players. They certainly shouldn't be contributing to the bullying going on with an athlete. All of this in a short two years it built up. It made its way around. No one got punished for the bullying they did even when it was proven. No one was reprimanded. When a school allows these things to go on inside of their walls it makes a person feel so unimportant. Like that the entire student body disliked me as well as the faculty. My mental health took a spiral downward. I wasn’t Important enough for the school to want to keep me happy. I wasn’t important enough to be kept safe from other students. Instead the school played into it. The administration treated me different. They would talk about me in break rooms. They weren’t supportive of me. This takes a massive toll on someone who is too young To be feeling those kind of things. Depression and anxiety in me went up and self confidence and self love went down. So to the school, please don’t ever allow this to happen to another student. The students deserve better. Don’t destroy them, protect them. Make the school safe again. Not from physical things but keep the students safe from emotional trauma.