After 42 years, North Vancouver school bullying victim gets closure

in: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/After+years+North+Vancouver+school+bullying+victim+gets+closure/7428096/story.html

 Robin Tomlin shows off an altered copy of his 1970 Argyle secondary yearbook at a press conference Friday. Tomlin was at the school to receive an official apology from the school district, more than four decades after a homophobic slur appeared next to his photo in the annual.

Photograph by: Mike Wakefield, North Shore News

After 42 years, Robin Tomlin feels as if he finally has closure on a pattern of bullying that tormented him in high school.

Shortly after 9:30 a.m. on Monday, Supt. John Lewis from the North Vancouver school district apologized to Tomlin face to face in the principal’s office at Argyle secondary for allowing the word “fag” to be printed next to Tomlin’s name in his 1970 high school yearbook.

“They just said how sorry they were and how it slipped through the cracks and they’ll institute remedies so that it won’t happen again,” Tomlin said.

Tomlin said he was satisfied with the apology.

“It’s closure,” he said by phone later. “I got a message to the school board to leave their doors open for kids in trouble instead of locking them like they did to me.”

Tomlin started his campaign to get the wrong addressed four years ago. Initially, the school district agreed to reprint the yearbook page with a revised entry chosen by Tomlin. As well, a copy would be provided to the North Vancouver museum and archives. But the district declined to say it was sorry in person — until Monday.

After getting the apology, Tomlin talked to the social justice class at Sutherland secondary school in North Vancouver, where he had been invited to speak.

He talked to them about bullying and the difference between when he was a teenager and today.

“We got the cyber-bullying now,” said Tomlin, 60. “It’s worse than ever because you don’t see it in the school — it’s outside.”

Tomlin, who has terminal liver disease, said he’s been surprised by all the support and coverage his story has received.

He thought it would either be shunned or ignored.

When he was in Grade 12, Tomlin was regularly taunted by what he described as a group of jocks.

He was quoted saying in a previous story that they would shove him and often say: “ ‘You little faggot, get out of the way.’ ”

He was so scared of his tormentors he never went to his high school graduation.

Tomlin said when he was a teenager, he was too scared to ask his friends for help. Today, that is no longer the case. Later Monday afternoon, friends arranged a “graduation ceremony” for him with a cap and gown in front of Argyle. Afterwards, everyone adjourned to the grad party at a local pub. Tomlin said he hasn’t been contacted by the yearbook editor about how the slur was printed. None of the jocks have contacted him either. Asked if that bothered him, Tomlin said: “I hope it bothers them — it doesn’t bother me.”

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/After+years+North+Vancouver+school+bullying+victim+gets+closure/7428096/story.html