By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
Lawrence Township school district officials have a challenge for Lawrence Middle School and Lawrence High School students and township residents — and that is, to attend an assembly next week to accept Rachel’s Challenge.
Rachel’s Challenge is a 45-minute program that grew out of the death of a Columbine High School student in 1999, according to Tonia Moore, LHS student assistance counselor.
The program, which will be presented to LMS eighth-graders and LHS freshmen and sophomores at a special school assembly Oct. 21, seeks to discourage school violence and bullying, Ms. Moore said.
The program will be presented again the same day for parents — regardless whether their children attend public or private schools — and interested township residents at 7 p.m. in the LHS auditorium on Princeton Pike. Students also are invited, but Ms. Moore said it is not suitable for students in the elementary or intermediate schools.
Rachel Scott was the first student killed during the Columbine High School shooting. The two shooters killed themselves after killing 12 students and one teacher, and injuring 23 students at the Littleton, Colo., high school.
Ms. Moore said Rachel Scott was “a good-hearted, open-hearted person who would ask a new student to sit with her at lunch in the cafeteria.” Rachel believed that if one person could go out of their way to show compassion, then it would start a chain reaction of the same.
In the wake of her death, her family created “Rachel’s Challenge,” which seeks to inspire, instruct and enable students to bring positive change to a school’s atmosphere, according to the Web site, www.rachelschallenge.com.
”The thrust of the program is that you can start a chain reaction of kindness,” Ms. Moore said. “You can reach out and treat each other with kindness. If some students are seen as outsiders, they need to be invited into the fold.”
Asked why the school district is presenting the program, which is funded by the Lawrence Township Education Foundation, the Lawrence Township Municipal Alliance and the high school and middle school parent-teacher organizations, Ms. Moore said LHS “will certainly profit from it.”
”Being kind is cool,” she said. “This is the message for people who have been victims, bullies and for people who would never be bullies but who have seen it going on in front of them. This will give them the confidence to speak up. It is something you can carry through your whole life.”
Bullying is “much more prevalent” among students in the younger grades, Ms. Moore said. High school freshmen are starting to sort themselves out into different groups, and sometimes people are left out, she said.
”There are a lot of social struggles in the ninth grade,” she said. “I think by the time they get to 11th grade, students feel more confident and there is less bullying with the older students. It’s a big transition from middle school to high school, and students are not at ease until they find their spot.”
The presentation is not a “one-shot deal,” Ms. Moore said. She said she was speaking to a student recently who saw the program when it was presented last year, and the student still remembered it.
”We hope to improve the school environment and the school climate, by putting the spotlight on kind behaviors and making all forms of bullying not acceptable,” Ms. Moore said.

