This week in GOALS we emphasized the difficulty yet the importance of sticking up for other people and keeping our values even in the most stressful times. People are often given a choice between right and wrong when approached with a difficult situation, but this line becomes blurred when they mix their own health or safety into the decision. All of us have values, and many of us want to uphold those values, but this proves to be extremely difficult when it comes to actually having to take action. It is human instinct to either fight or flee, and can we really blame people when they run away from a difficult situation? The point of bringing up this topic was to establish why we should care about sticking up for others and our morals, and how to do this even when our instincts say to back down.

This proved to be a complicated topic to talk about with the girls, as many of them were unsure about sticking up for other people when they too could suffer.

We started with a quote from Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, that read, “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” In the girls’ responses to this quote was a mixed reaction, as some didn’t fully understand it and others explained that it claims that people need to speak out when something is wrong rather than remaining silent. After their initial response to the quote, we talked about the Holocaust and Elie Wiesel’s experiences, as well as the people who had to make a decision between right and wrong just as we are talking about, but when their life and their family’s lives were on the line. When I went to the Netherlands last summer, I visited the museum of what used to be the Ten Boom house in Haarlem, the sight where the Ten Boom family harbored Jewish refugees escaping from the Nazi Holocaust during World War II. This family left a triangle in their window to indicate that it was safe for people who sought refuge, and ultimately successfully helped about 800 people escape. During this entire time period, their lives were threatened at every moment. Moreover, after being betrayed, the entire family was sent to concentration camps and prisons, each person dying except for one of the daughters. This is an extremely disheartening end to their story, but this one family saved 800 lives from perishing, an absolutely empowering and

courageous act. Of course, we were not asking the girls to go out and risk their lives, but these types of situations can occur every day in life, such as sticking up for some who is being yelled at. Is it fair for people to bully others just because they can, and what does that make us if we simply stand by and watch it happen? As Elie Wiesel explains, by not doing anything in an unjust situation, we are essentially assisting the oppressor. Again, a lot of this has to do with training our instincts to analyze how we can help rather than running away from a situation.

One of the girls explained that if someone is being bullied and she helps them, then she would probably be bullied too. This is a legitimate worry and something that could easily happen, which is why sticking up for what you believe in can be such a difficult task. But again, helping that one person who is suffering will make an immense difference in their life, and a bully is less likely to bully two or more people than a single person. However, we also made sure to talk about how when approached with a situation where we have the choice to take action, we also must analyze the situation so that we do something that would actually help because it can be easy to make situations worse. Overall, we had a really informative and empowering discussion on why sticking to our morals and helping others is so important, and the girls had many personal stories as well as inquiries about how they can react to different circumstances in their lives. We don’t actually know how we will react when approached with a situation where we have the option to help another, but I hope that I have the courage to stick up for others and myself.

-Ellora E.