'High School and Felicia’s Life Essay\r'

'A photo of genus genus Felicia with notes from her classmates. The recall dose, Briana Torres, at 16 a year older and a level ahead of Felicia, hugged her and walked her to sixth-period English class, the girls’ arms clasped around apiece other’s shoulders. On the way, Felicia cheered up enough to express joy at a joke, and process a joke of her own. But there were signs of unraveling. deep Monday night, she had posted a brief Twitter heart: â€Å"I cant, im done, I give up.” After take Wednesday, Felicia walked to the Staten Island Railway station where many students mature channelises home. She waited impatiently for the train, and as it approached, she hurled herself backward onto the tracks. A friend grabbed her arm, but she twisted free. She was pronounced dead that reddening. By the time her friends began to congregate in the hospital waiting room, posting messages on Twitter and Facebook in what would plough a flurry of online speculation ab prohibited her death, close to had pinpointed a cause: Felicia had been bullied, they give tongue to, tormented by football players on Tottenville’s undefeated team. some give tongue to she was teased because she had piercings and lived in foster care.\r\nOthers express players had spread sexual boasts nearly her over the weekend, later on Tottenville’s 16-8 victory over Port capital of Virginia High School. To many friends, she appeared to weather the swirl of innuendo with her usual confidence. â€Å"She never truly reached out for back up; she was a really tough per tidings,” Briana say Thursday, habiliment a small tribute on her left-hand(a) wrist †an â€Å"RIP Felicia” inked in colour. â€Å"When I dropped her off at class, I wasn’t really worried just about her.” Felicia had reported the taunts to an administrator, who set up mediation sessions between Felicia and the boys she said were harassing her. natural law a re now investigating her death. Neither they nor the gentility Department nor the shallow would comment on the push around allegations. There was already little that was easy in Felicia’s life. Friends described her childhood as a patchwork of loss and instability: both her parents died when she was young, and she disliked living with her aunt, said Kaitlyn Antonmarchi, 15, who said she had been Felicia’s best friend since eighth grade.\r\nAt one point, Felicia ran away from her aunt’s house with an older man. After she entered the foster system, she bounced in and out of different homes, dyed her dark cop red and sprouted a cluster of piercings. With her modish foster parents, Felicia finally seemed happy and stable, Kaitlyn said. move to the other side of Staten Island, she started high school at Tottenville, improved her grades, let the dye wash out and eliminated nearly piercings. At Friday’s football game, Kaitlyn said: â€Å"She looked happy . She was laughing. It didn’t look like anything was upsetting her at all.” Bullying is common at the school, classmates said, but administrators commonly acted to stop it, and it rarely reached the level that Felicia experienced. loosen Felicia, and she would come back with a quick, witty retort, said Alissa Compitello, 17, a senior. â€Å"If you tried to bully her, she’d laugh at you,” she said. â€Å"Somebody must’ve said something comely bad about her for this to happen.\r\nThey just wouldn’t stop.” On Wednesday, Felicia had asked Karl Geiling, 15, a sophomore at Tottenville, about how his test had gone. He saw her at the train station later. â€Å"I was way down, away from her,” he said. â€Å"All I heard was screams, and then everybody went silent.” At school on Thursday, many students wore black and purple, color in often associated with anti-bullying campaigns, and met with grief counselors. A crowd of about 5 00 gathered at the station in the evening, many holding candles. Someone had tied purple and black balloons to a chain-link fence overlooking the tracks, with notes and a photo fluttering alongside them. As their classmates created anti-bullying Facebook pages in Felicia’s honor Wednesday night, several football players took to Twitter to protest what they saw as the in large quantities tarring of the team, which is a perennial favorite to win the normal School Athletic League championship. At least two seniors have been offered scholarships to play Division I college football.\r\nâ€Å"None of you even no half the theme so stop pointing fingers at the football team,” wrote pack Munson, a safety on the team and the son of the team’s coach, Jim Munson. Another player, Richy Lam, a senior, said Thursday that many members of the team had not even known Felicia. In New York, an anti-bullying statute write in 2010, one of numerous laws passed around the awkward in the wake of teenage suicides, requires schools to develop policies to disapprove harassment of students by other students, including education programs and disciplinary procedures.\r\nProsecutions for student bullying are rare; mayhap the best-known case is that of Dharun Ravi, who was convicted of bias intimidation and attack of privacy charges for using a webcam to spy on his Rutgers University roommate, Tyler Clementi, who committed suicide a few eld later. Mr. Ravi was sentenced to 30 days in jail. â€Å"Bullying that violates distressing law can be prosecuted barbarously, but not as bullying,” said Suzanne B. Goldberg, a law professor at Columbia Law School who directs its centralise for Gender and Sexuality Law.\r\nPhysical violence or threats of physical violence could be prosecuted, she said, â€Å"but what most often happens is that schools and prosecutors try to keep these situations out of criminal court which can be appropriate if the school system ta kes the incident seriously, punishes the offender and protects the victim.” It is not polish off whether anyone will be disciplined in Felicia’s case. For some students, the school’s future(a) challenge is Friday’s football game against the bear upon Curtis High School team, the last of the season, which may be pushed to Sunday. Felicia was a fan. When Kaitlyn last saw her, she said, she had been be after to cheer Tottenville this weekend. â€Å"She said, ‘Yeah, I’m going,’ ” Kaitlyn said. â€Å"And I said, I’ll see you there.” Al Baker and Christopher Maag contributed reporting.\r\n'