Warning- There is quite a bit of swearing in this video.
Above is a video of a 68-year-old bus monitor named Karen Klein being verbally harassed by a group of middle schoolers on their way home from Athena Middle School in Greece, New York. Throughout the ten minute video, you can hear the kids verbally berate the woman. The video shows Klein trying her best to ignore the stream of profanity, insults and outright threats. One student taunted: “You don’t have a family because they all killed themselves because they don’t want to be near you.” (Klein’s oldest son killed himself 10 years ago.)
While this is a horrible and disgusting video, it is truly amazing to see how social media was used to create something that restores faith in humanity.
The video went viral and from around the world, small donations for Karen Klein poured into the crowd-funding site indiegogo.com, at one point crashing the site. The project which can be viewed here set a goal to raise $5,000, which would be enough to send her on the vacation of a lifetime. That was quickly reached, and soon the next goal was to get her enough money to retire. By Friday afternoon the amount raised was a staggering $527,325.
We all need to take a step back and look at how we treat each other. It is our job as educators and parents to teach children and lead by example. We hope this entire situation can help bring awareness to the serious issue that is bullying.
The only statement the school has released following all of this nonsense can be read here.
