There’s very little good that can come from suicide, but there’s plenty that we, as a country can learn.

If you’ve ever been teased or berated, you understand the power of human words, the way that they can affect you even if you ignore them.  And if you’ve ever been 15 and at a new school, you can begin to imagine what Phoebe Prince went through this past year.

After three months of bullying, Phoebe killed herself last January. Now, nine of her classmates have been charged in her death.

The sheer volume of charges being leveled against those nine teenagers should be enough to make you stop and think about what sort of culture we live in that raises children to lash out in this way. Charges from statutory rape to stalking are being laid against students, some of whom are 18 and will be tried as adults.

It may be difficult to understand the lack of compassion in Phoebe’s fellow students, but the greater travesty is the adults who knew that she was being severely bullied and did nothing. It seems to me to be an indictment of our society that mollycoddles children academically but then throws them out into the social world with absolutely no care.

If just one of Phoebe’s teachers had stood up for her and reprimanded the bullies, who knows if there would have been a different outcome.

I hope that teachers across America will take note of this story and realize that they are authority figures in their students’ lives.

The most effective lesson they can teach is to be compassionate. They must be active in the way people treat one another.

As for college students?

I pray to God that we realize how much our words and actions affect one another before it’s too late.

Lauren Smart is a junior creative writing and journalism double major. She can be reached for comment at [email protected]