Karen Klein

Some of you readers may have heard about this story. Some of you may have not. I hadn't until today. When I heard this, I was so shocked and disgusted that I just had to vent. So I decided to vent through this blog and share my two cents on this story and how I feel about it with my readers.

With modern technology that we have, videos of everything and everyone are uploaded onto the internet every minute. On July 19th, a video called Making the Bus Monitor Cry was uploaded. The video has now been viewed over 4 million times on YouTube. I've only seen bits of it. I haven't been able to finish it. It's ten minutes long and I cannot bear to watch the entire thing because I'm so revolted by the behaviour of these kids.

Basically, Karen Klein is a 68-year-old woman who works as a bus monitor at a school in the States. In the video, we see several students in the seventh grade insulting and taunting her. We even hear someone say that she doesn't have a family because they all killed themselves. And the sad part is that Karen actually lost one of her sons to suicide several years ago. And they go on and on. Karen doesn't respond. She attempts to hold herself together but does break down in tears.

Now from articles I've read, Karen Klein will not be pressing charges against those who harassed her. She says she hopes parents will teach their children how to be more respectful towards others. This woman is a class act. She really is and the fact that she isn't pressing charges should show those who taunted her what kind of woman she is.

Some of the students and their parents apologized to her. One of the students was quoted as saying "I feel really bad about what I did". Another said "When I saw the video I was disgusted and could not believe I did that. I am sorry for being so mean and I will never treat anyone like this again". Now the thing is that I'm not entirely sure if these kids are being genuine. They know what they said. They're not naive to know what they said to her hurt her. I think that a big motivation for them apologizing was the outrage and the fact that they were caught bullying her. If someone hadn't recorded the incident and posted it online, I highly doubt they would've apologized to her. Either way, they wouldn't have apologized on their own volition.

I don't know how the kids will be punished but they need to be punished in whatever way possible. Suspension for a very long time is a must. If I was the principal, I wouldn't even want these kids in my school. If they can act that way towards an elderly woman, how will they act towards teachers or other students?

A website has been launched to raise 5,000 dollars in order for Karen to go on vacation. The website has now raised over 400,000 dollars and there's still lots of time for donations. I think that that speaks the amount of support she's receiving and also the outrage at the treatment against her.

I'm nineteen years old and when I look at this story, it honestly makes me wonder about the kids today. When you hear kids talking like this and acting like this, you wonder what is wrong and what even provokes you to speak and act like that.

They say to respect your elders. Clearly these kids have no respect whatsoever in my opinion. If you talk like that to a figure of authority, in public, you really have very little respect. I look at this story and think that this woman is somebody's mother, somebody's grandmother. Would you want someone to speak to your grandmother or mother like that? I know that these kids wouldn't. So if you wouldn't want someone to speak to someone you love like that, then why would you do it?

Bullying is a topic we hear about everyday. I believe that we talk about it so much or hear about it so much in the media that it's kind of like an expectancy. We expect to hear something about bullying in the news or whatever kind of form of media. But this video puts in our face the cruelness of bullying.

I had to vent and get this off my chest because I honestly can't remember a story that affected me and shocked me to my core. This isn't the last we've heard of this story so we'll have to see how this turns out.