Pink’s just fine

BY SARA KEDDY

Kings County Register

A new Grade 9 student got a hard - and then great - start to his school years at Central Kings.

Wearing a pink polo-style shirt on the first day Sept. 5, he attracted the attention of bullies.

On the second day, they threatened to beat him up.

On the third day of school, Sept. 7, the student body backed the new student - in style. “I bought 50 pink T-shirts,” said Grade 12 student David Shepherd. “We’re making a statement.”

Classmates Travis Price, Chris Spencer, Nick Sullivan and John Kenneally joined in. “We went to the store before it even opened this morning to get more,” Price said. “The girls let us in early and were very nice.”

Shepherd said, once the staff at the Cambridge Discount Centre heard what they were up to, “clothes were flying. “They were digging to help us find pink shirts.”

The boys set up in the lobby Friday morning with their bags of pink shirts and “people would just grab them,” Shepherd said. “It’s our last year and we want to make a difference. At a young age, you don’t know the difference between playful teasing and bullying. Doing it over the colour pink is just so stupid.”

Nick Sullivan says his younger brother was with the new student when they were confronted by the bullies. Three days later, “the school looks cool - there’s pink all over the school,” Sullivan says.

The boys told the Grade 9 student to wear pink again Sept. 7, but he was too scared,” Shepherd said. “We saved one for him.’

Students scrawled messages on the shirts, turned the material into headbands and wrapped them around their bodies. “One of the guys that was doing the bullying came up to me and asked if I knew the story of pink,” Shepherd said. “I said, ‘’Sure, and it doesn’t matter.’”

That’s the message he wrote on his own shirt.

Central Kings principal Stephen Pearl said the students approached him with their idea for a pink wave of support, and he gave them some guidelines and the go-ahead. “It doesn’t surprise me at all they’d want to do this - we have some great kids.”

As far as disciplining those behind the bullying, Pearl said the incident is under investigation. “We know who all the people are, and it will be dealt with with appropriate corrective behaviour.”

While the lead bully didn’t show up for school Sept. 7, Pearl said he’ll get the message from his peers his actions aren’t acceptable at Central Kings. “Student-driven attention goes a lot further, and he’ll hear about what happened today.”