Article April 27, 2020 Issue

Bullying doesn’t have the last word

David Clark Scott

Originally published in The Christian Science Monitor’s Christian Science Perspective column January 27, 2020.

I’m not a University of Tennessee Volunteers football fan or even an alumnus. But I wear my U.T. shirt with pride. This new, bright orange T-shirt reminds me to have the moral courage to be open to intervening when possible, especially in the face of bullying.

Let me explain.

Laura Snyder, a fourth grade teacher in Florida, recently found one of her students with his head on his desk crying. At lunch, some fellow pupils had made fun of his homemade University of Tennessee T-shirt. The boy’s teacher didn’t ignore the problem. She responded by reaching out on social media to see if anyone had connections at the University of Tennessee to help get her student some gear. University officials heard about the incident and sent a box full of U.T. paraphernalia to the boy’s class and then put his hand-drawn design on official university merchandise. It quickly became a bestseller.

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