Photos: Mattituck students wear orange in support of ‘Unity Day’

Mattituck High School’s Students Against Destructive Decisions chapter and its Student Council sponsored an anti-bullying project today in support of Unity Day, a part of National Bully Prevention Month.

Students encouraged their fellow students to wear orange clothes and gave out orange ribbons to others during lunch period to help raise awareness of the destructiveness of bullying.

Tenth grader Brittney Longley was taking a lead role in handing out ribbons during fourth period lunch.

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“It’s in every grade, but I think it’s gotten better,” she said of bullying. “There was a suicide last year. It wasn’t because of bullying, but it made people think about being good to each other.”

Student Drew Krupski said that he hasn’t noticed much bullying in the school but “it’s a thing we should look at for future reference.”

Student Andrew Olsen said that he hasn’t noticed much bullying in the school, but has seen a lot of bullying between students on the internet.

“There are a lot of people being called names, a lot of cyberbullying.”

Ninth grader Robin Gromadzki, who has attended other schools in the past, said that she’s experienced a lot more bullying elsewhere.

“Not this school,” she said. “But at all the schools I used to go to. But here, they’re actually trying to help.”

“I’ve known people that got bullied,” said tenth grader Nick Mele, who wore a bright orange hat to school to match his orange sweatshirt.

Student Pulith Pieris was one of the students in the lunch room who decided to wear a ribbon for the day.

“It’s very good that we recognize bullying,” he said. “People get affected by it every day.”

Guidance counselor Andrea Nydegger helped organize the event. She hopes to make it an annual program at the school and said the student council might make anti-bullying rubber bracelets to give to students next year. She said that the event has become very popular with junior high school students in particular, whose classes were a sea of orange outfits on Wednesday.