On February 3rd, Adriana Kuch was found dead in her home in Bayville, New Jersey. The student of Central Regional High School in Berkeley Township in Ocean County committed suicide at just fourteen years old.
The student took her own life as a result of years of consistent bullying on school grounds. Just two days before her tragic death, Adriana was physically assaulted by four of her classmates in the hallway. She was hit on the head with a metal water bottle several times, punched, kicked, and her hair was pulled. She was beaten so brutally to the point where she blacked out as many of her peers stood by and watched.
The malicious incident was captured on video and posted to TikTok where Kuch’s fellow students flooded the video with crude and disturbing comments about Adriana.
Despite the fact that Adriana was assaulted in the halls of her school, no ambulance was called. She was just treated by the school nurse and no law enforcement or first responders were called to the scene, even though she was left unconscious. If law enforcement had been able to scope the scene, the video would likely never have been posted and it potentially could have saved Adriana’s life.
Adriana’s father, Michael Kuch, posted to FaceBook on February 8th, “a kid is assaulted with a weapon and their policy is not to call the police or file a report. I want the entire world to know what these animals did to my daughter. I will not sleep until their family has to watch them stand in front of a judge and plead guilty.”
Adriana’s death was not the first tragedy relating bullying to suicide in the state of New Jersey. Specifically, the death of twelve year old Mallory Grossman of Rockaway has disturbed their community. Mallory was bullied in school as well as on social media where she was asked by peers, “why don’t you just kill yourself already?”
According to a study by Young Risk Behavior, “children who experience bullying are twice as likely to attempt suicide as their non-bullied peers. Twenty percent of minors who are cyber bullied consider suicide, while ten percent actually attempt to take their own lives, resulting in approximately 4,500 deaths per year.”
Can these devastating deaths be deemed as coincidences? Absolutely not. This highlights the question of whether or not bullying is taken seriously on school grounds.
Dr. Neigel, Bernards High Schools principal, stated that there have only been six official HIB (Harassment Intimidation and Bullying) cases at Bernards this year which is an extremely low number. A survey published at Bernards High claims that 79.4% of the 170 participants said they have never been bullied on school grounds or through social media.
However, 72.3% of the 170 participants who have either been bullied or knew someone being bullied did not feel comfortable enough to report the incident to the school. Despite the fact that extreme bullying, luckily, may not be a common case at Bernards, schools still need to do a better job creating an environment where students feel comfortable enough to report incidents to teachers, guidance counselors, principals, or any trusted adult.
Nationally, it is clear that it is a common theme for students to not feel heard in school systems particularly when it comes to bullying. Those who work as critical members of an education system struggle to fulfill the endless demands they need to every single day and when incidents relating to bullying occur, one can only imagine the overwhelming additions that bring upon their already difficult job. However, it should not require a student to take his/her own life in order to bring attention to the issue.
The data also revealed that 64.8% of surveyed students felt as if Bernards has supportive mental health resources. This is a huge advancement as just years ago students did not have any resources on school grounds.
Bullying has always been a prevailing issue and from a very young age, students of Bernards have been programmed to know the severity of its consequences. However, the life of our youth is fragile and we must continue to go above and beyond when it comes to providing safety and security to the students at Bernards as well as on a global scale. Especially since we have seen the disturbing and gut wrenching outcomes of instances where schools have brushed it off in less than a one hundred mile radius from our community, bullying as well as mental health are serious issues that we can never take lightly.
