Bullies taunted Ohio teen Eric Mohat with, "Why don't you go home and shoot yourself?" So he did. In Missouri, 13-year-old Megan Meier tolerated cyberbullying until, one day, she read the hateful message, "The world would be a better place without you." So she hanged herself.

Mohat and Meier have not been forgotten. Their photos were displayed as recently as last week — along with the images of eight other youths, 13 to 18, who took their own lives as a result of being bullied — on a mural display in the common room of the private Desert Academy on Camino Alire Street.

October is National Bullying Prevention Month. According to a report released by the White House earlier this year, 13 million children are bullied each year. A recent report issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that some 160,000 kids nationwide avoid going to school because they fear bullying.

At Desert Academy, student council members and other student leaders put together an anti-bullying seminar that included the mural, discussion groups and screenings of films about bullying. The students have been supported in their efforts by school administrators.

The photo display of bullying victims — initially scheduled to stay up through the month — may already be down. According to Desert Academy 11th-grader Zoe Gibson, who helped spearhead the project, some of the younger students asked if it could be removed earlier than planned.

"It's visually difficult to look at because of what it means," she said. "It proves a point — that this is a reality we have to deal with."

Though Gibson doesn't think Desert Academy — which serves about 170 students in grades seven through 12 — is a hotbed of bullying activity, she said it's a misperception to assume that bullying is just a public-schools problem. "It can happen anywhere," she said. "Just because we are a private school does not mean we're immune to the problems facing all schools."

She said some younger middle-schoolers have told her that they have been bullied, while others have said they don't believe bullying exists at Desert.

Desert Academy student Taylor Bacon, a ninth-grader who took part in the seminar, said it's important for students to take the lead on this topic. "The movement has more power if it's peer to peer," she said. "Students have a greater influence over their class mates than adults sometimes."

Bacon said she hopes the school's emphasis on anti-bullying methods encourages students to stop bullying one another. "We can make a difference," she said.

This is the second year in a row that Desert Academy students have put together such a campaign, Gibson said. She said she's never been bullied, and has never bullied anyone herself. As to why students bully, her feeling is, "It comes out of insecurity ... in some cases it may come out of what's happening in the home environment."

Last April, The New Mexican published a lengthy piece I wrote on bullying and anti-bullying efforts within Santa Fe Public Schools: www.santafenewmexican.com/localnews/Guarding-against-bullying. If you want more information, you can easily find online resources, including www.bullyinginfo.org, stopbullying.gov, and pacer.org/bullying.

I'm sure Desert Academy is not the only school addressing this topic this month, but while I'm on the topic of that school, Desert Academy is holding an Open House about its offerings from 6-8:30 p.m. Wednesday at 313 Camino Alire, 992-8284.

Contact Robert Nott at 986-3021 or rnott@sfnewmexican.com.