School board allows tribute to Md. teen who committed suicide

WASHINGTON — Glenelg High School student Grace McComas was cyber-bullied for months before committing suicide in 2012, and after some initial opposition, her classmates will honor her at graduation in May.

The Baltimore Sun reports that the graduating class wanted to wear blue ribbons in honor of McComas’s memory but were denied by the school and the Howard County Board of Education.

That led to an avalanche of criticism on social media, including the memorial page for McComas. Last week, Superintendent Renee Foose said the school system had changed its mind.

At a Thursday school board meeting, Foose said, “If wearing the blue ribbon offers the McComas family and students and staff at Glenelg even one moment of peace in their grief, then I will honor that request,” the Sun reports.

McComas’s ordeal was the catalyst for “Grace’s Law,” a 2013 piece of legislation that criminalizes the use of social media to bully someone under the age of 18 in Maryland.

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