I understand your Darwinian point, and there's certainly an element of truth to it. The question is, how much do you value human life? You could, for example, send all your kids off to war, and indeed you will have "survival of the fittest." But you will also lose a lot of perfectly good future husbands and office workers, not to mention a lot of senseless, random deaths.
Kids do need to learn how to stick up for themselves, but in this case you had a 15-year-old who didn't know how. That's a failure of education. Nobody took her aside to explain that there was a legitimate (i.e. non-suicidal) way out.
There is also an element of gang assault here that is criminal. And it's completely inappropriate that 17-18 year olds were involved in this kind of immaturity.
There is two things that I think people are missing here, but I think the grandparent touched on. First Age means nothing, especially when you are trying to separate by one or two years.
There is no magic that happens when one turns 15, 16, 17, 18 etc. all that happens is you age another day. We all grow and change slowly, which is in part the reason that a company may prefer to hire a 30 something for a professional position, and a 20 something for retail type position. In other words, to me, it sounds like you are saying that what everyone else did was OK! but the 17 and 18 year olds should fry. They all should be punished, I don't know about locked up for life.
I cannot speak for others, but I had a pretty good idea of what was right and wrong before I was a teenager. That doesn't mean that I always chose to follow the right path. Part of being human is learning as we go, we all make mistakes, we all do dumb things.
I am not excusing this behavior in any way, on the contrary, I really blame the parents. I cannot blame the school officials, their hands are tied, god forbid these kids have any form of an authority figure in their lives. People say detention, suspension, expulsion. These people forget what it is like to be a kid, most dislike going to school, detention was usually fun, suspension was a vacation, expulsion meant you were going to another school next week.
I must admit, I am a huge fan of letting kids duke it out. That is the natural way of settling things, I was lucky enough to grow up at a time where fighting was allowed, however, frowned upon. I am not saying with weapons, I am saying with your fists.
Missed point #2, This could have easily been another Columbine, with lots of dead students and teachers, instead of just one. I should note that I put her parents equally to blame for her suicide as the harassing kids, they should have seen the warning signs, they should have been monitoring internet usage, most of all they should have been there for her. I see the job of a parent as that of someone who is there to help you pick up the pieces after you have fallen, not to prevent the fall in the first place. If you have kids, be there for them when they fall, be there to help them pick up the pieces, and know what is going on in their life so you can be prepared for the fall you can see coming.
