When bullying leads to permanent trauma...

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I have always despised bullies...

I ran across a story in today's Washington Post which describes multiple primary and secondary school children who have committed suicide over the past five years due to bullying. The reasons for the bullying may differ; one child bullied because she was short and overweight, another because he was tall and awkward, still another because he was effeminate. Whatever the reason, the reality is that these children should be alive and should have been able to grow into adulthood no matter their height, size, sexual orientation, or any other factor that leads some children to tease, harass, and beat up other children. 

I have always despised bullies...

When I was a child at FAMU High School, we, like other children, surely cracked jokes and "played the dozens," the latter of which was the age old practice of telling jokes about each other's mothers. Now, the joking was hardly ever personal, as most of us were close friends and knew each other's parents well due to scholastic events. And yet, even in joke telling, there was a code—no low blows. Meaning, there were limits to what could be said, and what couldn't be said. Example 1: "Aww, that's why your momma has that old super greasy jheri curl"—acceptable. Example 2: "Aww, that's why your momma is dead and your daddy's locked up in prison"—totally unacceptable! If some boy or girl chose a low blow like Example 2, the push back from the masses would have been swift and led to condemnation.

I have always despised bullies...

So, a story that I tell on occasion is how my matriculation as a Man of Morehouse almost ended before it really began during my freshman year.

Chuck Hobbs, circa August 1990, freshman photo at Morehouse College.

That December, while preparing for my very first finals, a diminutive friend of mine in Graves Hall had been missing for several days prior to the beginning of the reading period, one which always began on the Thursday before final exams started the following Monday. 

That Saturday, our friend showed up out of the blue and told the Brothers on the first floor of Graves that he had spent several days in the hospital because his roommate had been forcing him to sleep with the window up near his bed during a brutally cold late Fall. Back then, Graves Hall, the original building on campus that was opened in 1889, had those old boiler room heating systems where once the boilers were fired up, it was hotter than West Hell as students were forced to sleep with fans on, or with the window slightly cracked, to avoid being miserable!

Graves Hall circa 1889 (top). Graves Hall circa 2022…

But no one slept with the windows ALL the way up—let alone with a bed adjacent to the window—as Atlanta temps were in the low 20's and high teens that November and December. Nevertheless, that didn't stop my diminutive friend from being forced to sleep with the window wide open with the icy air freezing his head directly—and cooling off the rest of the room that was consumed with heat for his bully roommate to sleep comfortably along the adjacent wall. 

Later that afternoon, as I and my closest friends, the Florida Boyz, watched Duke University (featuring freshman star Grant Hill and junior Christian Laettner), play the University of Michigan, the bully happened to walk into my open dorm room to watch the game with us. I immediately inquired about the bullying that had just been described by his roommate and loudly asked him why was he treating my friend like that? The bully, without hesitation, said, mind your "fu*king business, Chuck Hobbs." Well, without much thought, I made it my business to punch him in the jaw—before kicking him a few times in the ribs after he fell to the floor—after which the Boyz decided to pull me off of him. 

The Morehouse Florida Boyz in Miami circa ‘96. That's me with arms folded on the back left…

That following Monday, I was summoned to Dean Raymon Crawford's office for the very first time to answer charges that I had exhibited "Conduct unbecoming a Morehouse Man" by assaulting the bully. Crawford, a retired U.S. Marine colonel, noticed my unfazed and unrepentant defiance and after a 20 minute back and forth interrogation, decided to suspend me from school. The anger in me as he said those words swelled instantly, but it was mixed with a slight fear about having to tell my parents that I had thrown my life-long dream of being a Morehouse Man away. I exited his office and began walking through the icy Atlanta wind back to the dorm to call my folks and start packing my belongings—all the while reminding myself that I would just go home, enroll at my hometown Florida A&M University, and still march steadily towards graduation and my professional goals.

Later that afternoon, sometime after 5 p.m. actually, I was called back to Dean Crawford's office; wearing the same scowl that was on his face earlier, he told me that he had reconsidered his earlier decision and instead of suspending me for a year, that he would place me on disciplinary probation for two years. Crawford explained that disciplinary probation meant that I could not run for SGA office and couldn't pledge a fraternity from December of 1990 to December of 1992, while reminding me that I was only one infraction away from being kicked out of school for a full year. 

While the bully that I swung on chose not to return to Morehouse for the spring semester, his victim and I did return and three and half years later, we graduated and became full-fledged Morehouse Men. 

Like Ol’ Hobbs, I am sure that each of you readers can remember bullying from your school days. In fact, some of you may have been bullies at some point or another, while others may have been bullied at some point or another. Thankfully, we all made it out of that period alive—even if some scars remain deeply embedded!

But the sad truth is that in 2023, bullying is not just a school "daze" scourge, but a problem in adult life as well, especially on social media platforms where people shun dialogue and respectful disagreement for nasty, vituperative comments and replies in the cyber public square. 

We can do better...We ALL must do better...