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No one knows for sure why Rhianna Morawitz killed herself just weeks after starting high school.
But the Wichita girl's name, her memory and images of her smiling face have become the driving force behind a renewed movement to combat school bullying.
"It makes a difference when it's up close and personal," said Rob Simon, a violence prevention specialist with Start Strong Wichita, a program founded by Catholic Charities to educate youth on healthy relationships and to end relationship violence and abuse.
"If it happens in New York or Iowa or L.A., it's a terrible thing, but we cluck our tongues and say, 'That's awful, but that's somebody else,' " he said.
"Now it's here, and you can't ignore it."
Rhianna's father says his 14-year-old daughter felt so dejected — at least in part because of insults hurled by classmates at Northeast Magnet High School, following years of similar bullying by different kids — that she came home from school one recent Tuesday, wrote a goodbye letter, put her cellphone on its charger and hanged herself in her bedroom closet. She died Sept. 21.
"We tried to do something, but it wasn't enough," Rick Morawitz said. "No other parent should have to go through what we've been through."
Since Rhianna's death, an online petition calling for "Rhianna's Law," an effort to end school bullying, has received more than 3,500 signatures.
Protesters have marched in front of the district administration building, accusing school officials of ignoring bullying behavior or not doing enough when a complaint is filed.
Walt Chappell, a member of the State Board of Education, has asked that a "meaningful discussion" of the state's anti-bullying policy be added to the board's agenda this month.
Following Rhianna's death, the Wichita district released a statement saying administrators at Northeast Magnet had been "made aware of a conflict involving several students" and that officials investigated. Citing student privacy concerns, a spokeswoman would not say whether any action was taken.
Online forums have labeled Rhianna's death a "bullycide," associating it with a string of cases nationwide involving teens and bullying.
Wichita police cautioned the public against forming conclusions or casting blame, because little is known about what drove Rhianna to take her life.
"There was never any official complaint filed with the Police Department in terms of a (bullying) incident," said Lt. Doug Nolte, a Wichita police spokesman.
As they investigated Rhianna's death — standard procedure with any apparent suicide, Nolte said — police looked into the allegations of bullying. What they found "didn't rise to the level of a criminal issue," he said.
"We'll never really know what happened," he said. "The tragedy is, there's a 14-year-old who felt her best option was to check out of life, and I just think, 'Man, we need to prevent that.' "
Statistics on bullying
Nationally, about 32 percent of students report being bullied at least once during the school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
State law defines bullying as any act that is "sufficiently severe, persistent or pervasive that it creates an intimidating, threatening or abusive educational environment."
Bullying can take many forms, said Kent Reed, a counselor and educational consultant with the state Department of Education:
* Verbal bullying, the most common form, includes name calling, teasing, racist slurs and sexually suggestive or abusive remarks.
* Physical bullying, the most visible and identifiable, includes hitting, tripping, kicking and damaging personal property.
* Cyberbullying means bullying by electronic means such as texting, e-mail or on social networks.
* Relational bullying is "the systematic diminishment of a targeted child's sense of self" through acts such as ignoring, isolating, excluding or gossiping, Reed said.
A 2008 state law requires Kansas school districts to have anti-bullying policies in place, but it does not require them to keep or report statistics on bullying incidents.
That will change this year, Reed said. For the first time, state officials are using new software to collect quarterly data on the loss of instructional time — including suspensions and expulsions — as a result of bullying.
"It's such a topical issue, and we know that what gets measured gets done," said Reed, who recently led a statewide school safety conference.
"We also encourage schools to rid themselves of that attitude that boys will be boys or girls will be girls.... Times have changed, kids have changed. It's a different climate and culture, and that also extends to schools."
Chappell, the state school board member, lobbied last fall for tougher measures against bad behavior. He said the recent Wichita tragedy illustrates the need to track incidents of bullying more carefully and to deal with them swiftly.
"We as a state have a constitutional responsibility to make sure we educate every child," he said, "and you can't do that when students are looking over their shoulder or wondering what might happen when class dismisses."
Last fall, in response to a spate of teen suicides blamed on anti-gay bullying, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights sent a letter to school officials outlining their responsibilities — and potential legal liability — in cases of bullying.
"Bullying is a problem that shouldn't exist," Education Secretary Arne Duncan told reporters. "We need to confront the problem openly and honestly and put students on notice it simply won't be tolerated anymore."
'We are not doing enough'
Since his daughter's suicide, Rick Morawitz and his wife, Lisa, said they have heard from students and parents in Wichita and surrounding districts about being bullied at school. Several parents indicated that their children had talked about committing suicide to end their torment.
Christy Winn, who teaches at a Wichita elementary school, said she transferred her daughter out of a Wichita middle school last year after a psychologist hired to test the girl for attention deficit disorder because of falling grades discovered she was being bullied so severely and repeatedly that she had considered suicide.
According to the psychologist's March 2010 report, which Winn shared with The Eagle with her daughter's permission, the girl "questions the intentions of others and feels hopeless in regards to the situation getting any better."
"These bullying episodes are occurring on a daily basis, throughout the day, and are severely impacting her ability to function," wrote the psychologist, who recommended anti-depressant medications and therapy, as well as contacting the school.
Winn said she felt "shocked and guilty" when she read the report. She knew some girls had teased her daughter. She had even talked to the principal after one incident in sixth grade, when a girl pushed her daughter into a bookcase. Both girls were given after-school detention, she said, because after being pushed, Winn's daughter called the girl a name.
But she had no idea how severe and dangerous the bullying had become. She transferred her daughter out of the school without sharing the report with administrators because, she said, "I couldn't be sure she'd be safe."
Now Winn's daughter, a ninth-grader, is "making great grades and doing much better," though she still distrusts girls and has few girlfriends, Winn said.
Winn said she contacted Rick Morawitz after Rhianna's suicide to offer condolences — their daughters had been friends and classmates — but also because she wanted to speak out against bullying.
"I'm a teacher because I care about all kids, not just my own," she said. "This was my fear. I remember thinking, 'Things are so bad that something bad is going to happen to one of these kids,' and now it happened.
"We have a dead child, and we are not doing enough."
Schools' response
Debbie McKenna, executive director of safety services for Wichita schools, said the district takes every report of bullying seriously.
Statements of "we told the principal but nothing happened," as Morawitz and other critics alleged recently, are "very frustrating," McKenna said.
Administrators are trained to respond to reports, investigate whether allegations are true and determine whether behavior is bullying or simple peer conflict, she said.
Last school year, Wichita schools logged 357 cases of bullying, down from 469 the previous year. But last school year, for the first time, bullying was among the top five topics of concern for parents calling the district's grievance office.
"Sometimes it's a matter of sitting down and saying, 'Let's line out exactly what we're going to do to address it,' " said Kim Johnson-Burkhalter, director of parent and community support.
