Wednesday, March 11, 2009

What Would You Do?

Last night I was watching an episode of What Would You Do?
The first story was about Hazing in colleges. I am a sorority girl and I never had to go through anything remotely like that. I know that it happens but have never witnessed it or gone through that myself. It was hard to watch those girls speak to the pledges in the way that they did and then in the next sentence call them a friend. It was as equally hard to see the boys humiliate the pledges in public for a special friendship.
The part of the episode that just tore me up was the part where the staged a seen to see what you would do if someone had collapsed on the sidewalk. The first person they had collapse was a woman and with in seconds there were people there stopped to help her and call an ambulance. But the second person they had staged to collapse was a man. They made him out to look like he was homeless, scruffy clothing, trash bag in hand, beer can in hand. Person after person walked by some walked a little quicker as they passed him. One lady made the sign of the cross as she walked by. After 88 people had walked by him along came a lady with a cane. She stopped and tried to see if the guy was okay and needed help. When she got no response she started asking people that passed by if someone would call an ambulance. As she was checking on the guy she gave him a name and called him by it. After 22 people walked by and ignored her finally someone stopped and called an ambulance. The host of the show explained that the woman who stopped to help him was herself homeless, sometimes. And after the cameras and everything came out of hiding people flocked around to sign releases ect.. to get on camera. The woman who helped simply quietly walked away.
This just tore me up! I sat on the couch and cried as she simply stood there and politely ask people to call an ambulance and she was ignored. She cared for this man, she cared enough to give him a name.
As I went to bed last night I just had a hard time getting this out of my mind. I just think that it is so sad that no one would help even after someone stopped to help and just needed someone to make a phone call.
This part of the episode was brought on by several videos that have surfaced of people collapsing and no one doing a thing till it's too late. The first was a video of a woman who collapsed in a hospital waiting room and was ignored. A cop even went and looked at her but didn't do a thing. By the time someone came to help her she had died. This video is also on YouTube, it's called Video Shows Woman dying on NY Hospital floor.
The other video was a homeless man who had been attacked after an argument and when he fell he hit his head on the bumper of a car and he was just left there. This was in front of a grocery store. People walked by and and ignored him one person loaded groceries into their car while he laid right beside them and they did nothing. After 20 minutes of laying there a store employee finally called police and it was too late the man died.
I won't post the video but if you want to check it out it's on YouTube and it's called Man Left Dead, People Ignore Man Dying on Street.

It's sad to think that these things happened and people just let them. It's Sad!

1 comment:

Sarah said...

What happend to compassion?