Opinion ID: 216418
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Color-Guard Tryouts

Text: School policy prohibited K.C. (as a long-term home-instruction student) from attending school functions. But administrators permitted K.C. to return to try out for the field-commander position for the next school year at the same time S.M. would vie for a color-guard spot. While walking to the gym for her tryout, S.M. came within three feet of K.C. and her parents. S.M. reported that K.C. “stared at [her] menacingly” and that “[she] was intimidated and terrified and started crying.” S.M. “absolutely fell apart” during her tryout and failed to make the team; K.C. earned the position of field commander. The following fall, S.M. overdosed on a prescription drug. In her suicide note, S.M. “expressed a desire to die because of the breakup with her boyfriend,” as well as “ongoing anxiety and fear and a sense of injustice and unfairness that she had felt she had no other option other than to transfer . . . because she did not feel safe attending [R]ock Hill High School where she would not[], she knew, be protected in any way from this student.” When released from the hospital, S.M. began attending South Point High School.