I found this quote on my friend Shannon's blog and thought it had to do with our school's (ASTI) constitution.

  Their reaction to the truth hurt me because I  had gone to school with them for 3 years already and they should have known me by then and I didn't know how many of the other girls in my grade or even school thought this about me. I felt like everyone I knew hated me besides my best friends. I had one of two options, to go with the rumors and let people think what they want, or to tell everyone I know that its not true and hope that will spread around fast.

I think it has to do with number 6 and 10 on the ASTI constitution. Number 6 is "Speak up for yourself and others." It doesn't say in her post if she did speak up for herself, but even if she did I have a hard time believing it would work. Although it might, you can never underestimate the cruelty of children. Scratch that, make it EVERYONE. The problem is, not every school is ASTI. ASTI is good at keeping our bullying down. That's mostly because of the size of the school and because all the teachers here actually care for their students. Number 10 on the constitution is "Resolve conflict peacefully." That's easy to do right? As long as you and the other person are in the right mindset that nobody will start screaming or throwing tables and chairs around. Shannon's idea to try and spread an anti-rumor would be peaceful. That's the best thing to do, instead of just keeping quiet, because keeping quiet means bottling feelings, and bottling feelings means an explosion of emotion. Explosions of that sort tend to be messy and take a long while to clean up. and maybe, just maybe, it starts even more rumors. Not the desired effect at all.