THORP, Wis. – Students walked out of the Thorp School to protest bullying. Seventy students, supported by parents and community members, participated with tales of bullying on buses and elsewhere at the 400-student middle and high school. Elizabeth Winger said her son was bullied in the locker room while on the middle-school football team. “It started with verbal stuff. The queer. The fag. The profanity,” Winger said. “They were holding him down. Farting, putting their butts on his face and farting on him. And then it had just accelerated at an alarming rate from there, being held down and hit with sticks and belts.” Winger said. How were bullies punished? Three players were assigned to wash tables. Punishment, said Winger, should fit the crime.
Family aftermath
Elizabeth Winger and her husband, parents of a bullied son, pulled their four children out of school. “It was the hardest decision we ever had to make. We sold our forever home and we had to take our children away from their friends. They didn’t have a future here.”
What to do
Kaci Satterstrom, a high senior who organized the walkout: “I want the School Board to rethink their policies. I want the parents notified right away when anything happens, like any bullying incident.”
Official response
District Administrator Paul Blanford: “We definitely do not support bullying. We plan on looking into all these cases the kids mentioned.”