"I wanted President Obama, the vice president or someone to talk to the kids at my school that it don't matter what you look like, or the color of your skin, you can't treat people bad."
No one from the West Wing has been to her school to make that presentation since her father, Rodney Smith, mailed her handwritten opus to the White House in January.
But Ziainey's mother, Zina Stokes, said that hasn't stopped her daughter from recruiting friends to join her yet-to-be-named group or from researching other anti-bullying agencies.
"She's really taken an initiative," said Stokes, "and I stand by her."
Ziainey's idea came from years of experiencing constant teasing and name-calling at the hands of her classmates at the Belmont Academy Charter School, her mother said.
At first, the then-third-grader suffered in silence.
"She wasn't telling anyone that a girl was taking her lunch," Stokes said. "She would come home hungry, and we didn't know why."
To avoid further trouble, she was transferred to Our Mother of Sorrows, a parochial school on 48th Street near Wyalusing Avenue, where things seemed to improve.
But Stokes said that the taunts started up again. "They kept telling me I have a big forehead," Ziainey said. Then they began saying that a friend of hers is gay, which he isn't, she said.
The fifth-grader's grades began to slip, and she became despondent, her mother said.
This kind of reaction is typical of students who are being bullied, said Charles Williams, director of the Center for the Prevention of School-Aged Violence at Drexel University, which is hosting a forum at 6 p.m. tomorrow on Drexel's campus, 3128 Market St., to discuss violence and bullying prevention.
