There is nothing to celebrate

The truth can either be liberating or not. The truth about my school had been hided for way too long, but once it all started to come to the light, once everyone were able to see how truly terrible things were, the world was just set on fire.  I believe that the whole city went crazy by hearing that "the best preparatory" was full of harassers from the news and the news papers had a big impact in their lifes, in the "Prestige" of the school.     

For some unknown reason the authorities have figured out that covering up the problems will make them disappear. They have created a very interesting ways to discredit every single accusation that was made against the teacher, all in order to protect them so everyone would keep them thinking that it was the best school on town. It was all just pretend.

As I have mentioned in some post ago, we did started to invite every single girl to accuse their harassers, but by Monday we have only got 6 accusations and that wasn´t enough, so we decided to remind them that their accusations were very important. The committee decided that an informative assembly woukd be the best we could do, so everyone would know what was going on. No one assisted. At firt we were terribly disappointed but then we remembered that that day the week of celebration for the 60th year of the school started, and that it was taking ploace in the auditórium, so we decided to move here ang gave the information that it was needed.

We were suprised to find at least 60 parents standing in front of the auditórium, and with that public, we started.

The first thing we said was an speech about how important it was for women to stand together against all the oppressors, no matter whether you call them boss, classmate or teacher, we shoukd all stand against them, because by being together we get stronger.

I remember myself asking them who had a daughter, some hands were raised, then I asked, how many of you know if your daughters are being harassed, some hand were raised, and finally I said, "those who didn´t raise your hand, are you sure your daughter is not being harassed?, because she could be being harassed and you wouldn't even know". There was a complete silence. The next thing I saw was a woman cryng, in that moment I wished there were no more things to be said, but they were. The next thing I did was to beg to the parents to believe in their daughtes testimony, I begged them to not call their daughters a liers or sluts, I begged them to gave them the support they desperately need. I begged them to not leave them alone in the tortuous path they have in front of them, I begged them to please be the people they needed them to be.

After that, I mentioned that the school was tryng to make everything look perfect, they disappeared
the mural we had made and adorned the walls with some fancy fabrics. I looked at them, I pointed
to the fabrics and said "during the last sixty years harassers have been protected instead of the victims, there is nothing to celebrate. Inside the auditórium you will hear things about how amazing this school is, but that is just a bunch of lies".

I hope they have listened to me, I hope a girl got the support she needed from her parents, because tha's all I can do right now, hope.

-L