Gossip and rumors circulate and effect students at Somers Middle School

Editors note: The following article was written by Somers Middle School seventh-grade student Kaycee Smith for a journalism project in Sara Walters’ class.

Gossip circulates around middle schools all around the country. There are many ways people have reacted to the harmful and untrue words, whether it’s crying, not talking to people about it, skipping classes, or even not coming back to school for a while. People can lose their friends, and many other close relationships, some teenagers even become suicidal.

Kelsey Gillespie, a seventh grade student at Somers Middle School, thought one of the common ways of gossiping in her school is spreading rumors.

Gillespie stated that a girl in her school told the school counselor a fake story so Gillespie would get in trouble. This person also told everybody to ignore her.

After the rumor started, the teachers took Gillespie in for questioning. Gillespie told the truth and everything was okay after that.

But, Gillespie was affected by it by becoming angry.

“I felt like punching the girl in the face! I didn’t know if I could ever forgive her again,” Gillespie said.

Kasey Zirker also goes to SMS and she shared stories about how girls lie.

For example, a girl didn’t like a boy she was dating so she left him. When he asked why she left him, the girl blamed it on Zirker.

Zirker thought she was the girl’s friend. She was sadly torn because the boy and she were just friends, nothing more.

“As soon as I heard she told him that I was the reason they broke up, we weren’t as good of friends,” Zirker said.

She shared another story about when she broke her ankle last year.Zirker asked her friend to tell everyone back at school that she broke her ankle.

And sure enough, the friend told, but she told people she tripped over a rock and broke her ankle.

Everyone believed Zirker’s best friend, so when she got back to school they teased her about her friend’s little joke. Zirker forgave her and the two are now friends again.

McKenzie Knuth, a seventh-grader at SMS, had a bad experience with one of her good friends.

Knuth told her best friend a cool fact about a subject and told her friend not to tell anyone about it. The friend promised.

Then, later that day, the friend told people and forgot to tell them not to tell. So after a while the words got changed around and got worse, depending on who the next person told.

The next day, Knuth asked her friend if she told or not. The girl simply said no and left.

Knuth believed her, happy to hear her friend say no. Unfortunately, as soon as her smile started to show, it went flat.

“They all called me names,” she said. “I didn’t know what to say back to them, so I walked off.”

Right after that, the good friend came running up to Knuth saying she was sorry she told anyone.

Knuth got mad at the girl. Then, that same day, the friend started to call her the names as well.

The two are not friends anymore.

Knuth went home crying that day, feeling down on herself and is still called the horrible names.

According to a survey about gossip in and around SMS done in Mrs. Walters’ language arts class, more than half of the 60 students answered that they had gossiped before.

The question, “Have you ever gossiped?” was answered by 53 percent of students with “yes” or “I think, but don’t remember”.

“50 percent of my work is gossip, and gossip ties into bullying,” Brittney Katzer, the counselor at SMS, said. “It’s not innocent, but very hurtful.”

Katzer stated that it’s like the game of telephone, and in order to get the real story, she has to track it down to find it.

She also indicated that the kids think their friends are talking about them when one whispers into another’s ear. If someone takes your friend away to tell them something secretly, the students instantly think the secret is about them.

Katzer believes that kids gossip sometimes because they don’t think it’s hurtful, rather, they think it’s helpful.

For example, if a person heard that someone had called their friend a hurtful name, that person would come to their friend and tell them.

Her advice to this predicament is to “ask yourself if it’s helpful or hurtful.” In other words, is it helpful to tell your friend that they had been called certain mean names, or is it just hurting the friend to know.

Many kids take this advice and use it, but others don’t.

Some kids that get affected by gossip go home and continue online.

They either text message their friends about who said what or go on Facebook and post a mean comment about the person.

Doing this is cyber-bullying as well as gossip, because it’s not necessarily true and it’s definitely not nice. Also, if the victim of the rude comment finds out it was posted they won’t be happy.