Jody Dyess, who leads Say Something Assembly, which aims to stop bullying and suicide in schools, spoke to the Kiwanis Club Wednesday about bringing the program to Marion County.
Dyess said the reason behind the Say Something Assembly is simple: We want to stop hearing stories.”
Dyess, whose program is based in Las Vegas, opened up about his own experience with his daughter, Emily, who was bullied by three classmates so bad that she unsuccessfully attempted suicide. He said Emily was one of the most popular kids in her school as a freshman, but the bullying trio didn’t like the attention she received.
The following year, when Emily was a sophomore and the girls were seniors, Dyess said the bullies targeted Emily because of her presence and popularity and began to send rude texts from an anonymous number. The texts included jabs such as, “You’re so ugly” and “Why would you wear something like that?” and became a daily occurrence.
The bullying took such a toll on Emily that she went from being an outgoing person to never wanting to leave the house. She began to change her appearance as well, and her parents believed that Emily was going through a phase and didn’t notice the red flags.
It culminated with finding his daughter unconscious in her grandmother’s bathroom, slumped over the toilet after taking prescription pills from the medicine cabinet following several vicious texts.
“That was the worst day of my life all because three girls decided to pick on my kid,” he said.
That led Dyess to begin Say Something Assembly. He said that often students believe that nobody cares enough about them and there’s nobody that will pick them up. He said during the program he’ll call the school staff up to stand behind him and make it a point to let the students know that the school’s faculty does in fact care about them very much.
“I challenge them to this. There is someone that will pick (them) up. There’s a lot of them, and I’ll prove it to you,” he said. “Every one of these people (the staff) come every day, and there’s more degrees standing behind me at that point than in most of corporate America. They get up every day to come to school because they believe in (the students). If they’re hard on them, it’s because they’re picking them up.”
