Dear Knight Life staff and advisories,
A recent event connected to Loy Norrix High School has taken a considerable toll on the student and local community.
The Death of Carl Bragg should not be something only spoken amongst friends when personally reminiscing. When life changing events occur at a student level, especially when a student commits an act such as taking their own life, it should be reported. Just so I was sure that it wasn’t reported on, I scoured your website and you recent issue looking for anything pertaining to Carl or anything even nearly close. All I found was articles about spaghetti and Valentine’s Day, slippery steps, two articles about video games, and literature. All of which were released weeks prior to Carl’s passing.
Before I get ahead of myself I do mean to mention the article titled, “Suicide: Addressed at Death” written by Clayton Barker, one of your journalists. Reading this article’s title left me hoping that the staff has decided to try and affect the social elephant unlike the rest of the school, but I was sadly disappointed. I know that his article is an opinion column but any publically stated opinion needs to provide real solutions to real situations. Your journalist goes on to speak that one should try and “feel” the meaning of suicide, and even goes as far as to assume his audience has dealt with suicide before. To finish off the article your journalist not only states that he’s finishing up his opinion, he tries to bring up how we should stop bullying, one of many factors to suicide, but brings no solution to the problem. Not only did this article talk about the subject of suicide and provided no real substance for readers to go on, it tip-toed around Carl’s death. Ironically enough this article even says we shouldn’t turn our minds away from suicide, but to merely address suicide face to face. Yet this newspaper just threw away the opportunity to live by example!
I apologize if you feel I’m bashing your journalist but I’m bashing you as an organization; not only as so called journalists but as humans with a consciousness. Apparently the front cover of the Loy Norrix paper needed to talk about how the steps to the tower in the morning can be difficult to maneuver around than to talk about how the high school has taken a loss to its student body. This isn’t a student paper if even the students don’t care about the students. Writing an article about Carl would probably ease more kinks in our students brain then just articles about how video games could potentially be harmful; a cliché debate. It’s not about the news coverage, it’s about making it known that there is a serious issue that students need help understanding or even help with. Giving a number to call that was given no explanation of whose on the other end to help is just lazy. But say you wrote an article, or even several articles, it would let the administrators know that there’s something to be done
Knight Life you aren’t the only ones at fault. I wrote and delivered this letter to hopefully bring change. Carl Bragg can’t speak for himself anymore, nor did he speak for himself when he was alive. Immortalize his existence by acknowledging what his death in hopes to even have those who are struggling with interpersonal thoughts to come out to speak upon it.
Your words are powerful KL, choose them wisely.
Sincerely,
Tre’ Thompson