Brownback Tweeter's High School Classmates Are Bullying Her

Though much of the country came to the defense of Emma Sullivan, the Kansas high school student who got into a very public Twitter spat with Gov. Sam Brownback this week, her high school classmates haven't been quite as supportive.

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Though much of the country came to the defense of Emma Sullivan, the Kansas high school student who got into a very public Twitter spat with Gov. Sam Brownback this week, her high school classmates haven't been quite as supportive. In fact, they've bullied her into staying home from school on Tuesday, she tells Politico. Sullivan declined her principal's request that she write a letter apologizing to the governor for writing a rude tweet after Brownback's office contacted the school. A lot of people defended her on the web, and even Brownback said yesterday that his staff overreacted when they came across her tweet, "#heblowsalot." Yet -- and we have to say this feels like a first in the politics of high school -- Politico's Tim Mak says the high school students have actually rushed to throw their support behind their principal, Karl Krawitz. (Meanwhile, Politico notes Krawitz himself is receiving threats from across the country. Let's all just calm down!) Politico quotes Sullivan saying:

“It is just bullying, and I’m trying not to take it to heart because that’s what they want me to do,” she said Tuesday. “I’m getting a lot of negative attention locally, and that’s a lot to deal with. The students at my high school are being really bad about the situation - it just sucks that they don’t support me at all in any of this"

On Twitter she and her principal, Tim Meadows Karl Krawitz, seem to have reconciled, because she tweeted today: "I just got off the phone w/ dr. k, he knows this was never aimed at him & this is out of control. Lets move on."
This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.