Following three months of harassment by fellow students at South Hadley High School, student Phoebe Prince committed suicide. Prince’s reported “bullycide” has brought national scrutiny on the quiet suburban town of South Hadley and provoked a lawsuit against the students involved in the bullying. The prosecution announced on Monday that nine South Hadley students were being indicted on felony charges in the case of Prince’s death.

The charges against the students are part of an anti-bullying movement in the state that began following the suicide of Springfield student Carl Walker last year.

The students who bullied Phoebe Prince should be punished. No one is questioning this. But I have to wonder what the endgame is. Are Massachusetts officials really seeking justice for Phoebe, or are they trying to protect our state’s reputation?

A felony charge is a harsh punishment for behaviors that wouldn’t merit a detention in most school systems. The students at South Hadley High had no way of knowing that their actions would result in Phoebe’s death. Students are bullied in schools every day – and rarely are there any repercussions. Phoebe Prince’s suicide was a wake-up call about the reality of bullying in our school system, but the reaction to her death has been too much, too late. By turning bullying into a felony, Massachusetts officials will not eradicate it from public high schools, but instead, turn it into a hot-button issue and increase tensions within the school and the community.

If every girl who called another girl a derogatory word was brought before the Massachusetts courts, the Commonwealth’s District Attorneys wouldn’t have time to do anything else. You’ve all seen the movie Mean Girls. Who here has ever felt personally victimized by Regina George? The answer: everyone.

The story of Prince’s death has sex – not just the kind that makes babies, but also the sensationalist appeal that sells newspapers. It’s sensational, it’s tawdry; it will probably be a Lifetime movie next year. But the story has become more important than the case itself. The charges against the teenagers are building into a witch-hunt. The prosecution is trying to make an example of these students, to show that bullying won’t be tolerated in their school systems. But we have to ask ourselves: is this really the right way to address bullying in our schools? Will bringing criminal charges against the South Hadley ‘Mean Girls’ really change anything?

Nine teenagers have been brought up on charges ranging from statutory rape and criminal harassment to “violation of civil rights resulting in bodily injury.” Six are being tried as adults on felony charges. Another three are being tried in juvenile court. According to Northampton District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel, one more student is being investigated and may be charged. No school officials are being tried. In an interview with the New York Times, Scheibel said this was because the administrators had “a lack of understanding of harassment associated with teen dating relationships.”

Scheibel also said in the interview that at least four students and two faculty members tried to intervene in the bullying or report it to the administrators. No further action was taken.

The indictment of the South Hadley students is a way for Massachusetts officials to show that they are doing something about the problem of bullying. Phoebe Prince’s “bullycide” was an embarrassment to the town of South Hadley. The prosecution is making an example of these students in order to protect the area’s reputation.

South Hadley town selectman Robert Judge told the New York Times “Like most towns, we like to think of ourselves as a good place to live, and then this happens and your reputation is sullied nationally and even internationally and people look at you differently and make assumptions.”

Trumping up charges against the teenagers now doesn’t make up for the lack of action on the part of the administration at the time the bullying took place. There were adults who knew what was going on at the time Phoebe was harassed – and they did nothing. Criminalizing the act of “bullying” isn’t going to improve the situation in South Hadley Schools because it does not address the real problem. Turning bullying into a felony only deals with the after-effects of bullying – it punishes students after the damage has been committed. The schools need to focus more on suicide prevention, and on creating a system for dealing with bullying before it reaches the point it did with Phoebe Prince.

Rachel Dougherty is a Collegian columnist. She can be reached at [email protected].