To the editor:

I am a junior attending the North Kingstown High School and want to address an issue that has been circulating around school for as long as I’ve been here. North Kingstown is a place for people to make new friends and make new relationships, specifically romantically. We can all agree that high school is a social setting and at some times can be overwhelming. That being said, these overwhelming emotions that teens feel can in turn make the person become abusive towards their significant other. In a statistic from loveisrespect.org, one in three adolescents in the U.S. are victims of abuse, whether it be physical, verbal, sexual, ect.. With the recent news of athletes and actors being exposed for their abusive actions towards others, this makes it a proper time to bring up a topic like this.

In a survey I sent out to students, over 51% of them have or know someone who has been a victim of dating violence and in the terms of dating violence being a problem NK faces, 50% said yes and 35.7% said maybe.What I am trying to do is bring awareness to the topic and incorporate more class time or assemblies on the topic and make students feel that they are safe. In a statistic from love is respect, only 33% of teens in an abusive relationship have told someone about the abuse. I would also like to have a place to digitally report dating violence on the high school home page. These solutions would benefit the school in helping teens who face abuse feel like they have a voice and a person or persons to go to.

Kailin Diaz