Hi, I’m Ezequiel. I am currently a senior. I’m here to talk about the fighting and lack of communication in my high school. Most of my family has gone to the school and most of my family will go to there. I’m here today because I don’t want to leave it in such a bad place. I want my family, and others’ families, in a safe place where they don’t have to look over their shoulders to make sure nothing bad is going to happen.
Since freshman year, when everybody started to come in from online learning, there have been regular and frequent fights. Students were not in a good place of mind, and they didn’t really have people to talk to. They aren’t comfortable being vulnerable to people aside from their friends. And when the students withdrew emotionally, for some reason the school did too. The school stopped doing one-on-one mental health check-ins when we returned to in-person learning. Without this support, students kept their emotions inside and would often explode onto whoever crossed their paths. I’ve seen people get into fights because they accidentally bumped into a person in the hallways or talked to them in the wrong way. Students were sent to in-house suspension and more, but students wouldn’t reflect on what happened and would get into trouble again. The administration made empty threats. And so, the fights got worse. They progressed from once every week to every other day. Some involved weapons. Fights caused schoolwide stay-in-place orders while they happened, interrupting learning and creating an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty. Teachers didn’t really tell students what was happening, but then the fights began happening so often that the teachers didn’t need to. We assumed.
The main reason for these fights is a lack of help, communication and protection. Students don’t trust the teachers to talk to them about their problems. The teachers are mandatory reporters, so the students think the teachers either report you to CPS or don’t do anything if the problem isn’t severe enough. The students are scared to add onto problems at home by coming forward, or they don’t know how to bring their problems up. When the school does talk about mental health, it’s in an assembly to many students at once. The school needs places where students can talk to adults openly with only necessary reporting. The school can help create this comfort with a calming room, relaxed conversation, and an adult who would let them speak without interruptions—genuine conversation that makes them feel safe.
The school can also work on communicating to parents and working through these problems with them; it’s good to have parents involved so they can try to do something at home. Around a month ago, a student brought in a knife and was prepared to use it to attack another student. My mom didn’t find out there was a knife fight until a day later. The school isn’t even with how it gives out information. The school could hold meetings with conversations about how to make the school safer. The school can provide resources for having these difficult conversations. If students got that help at home, it would help the hostility in school.
When it comes to the fights themselves, there is also unequal enforcement. A lot of the security is buddy-buddy with the students and gives them a lot of leeway. The relationship isn’t professional, which stops security from taking the actions necessary to ensure students feel safe. Security usually does their jobs during fights, but when it comes to drama, yelling, and similar incidents, many security guards stand around and don’t do anything until the last minute; one time, one was laughing. Security guards are not well-prepared to deal with students as adults and not children—to talk down people and work through the problems. They should take the students to a place where they feel comfortable and can relax to blow steam off. Security guards should be trained to talk people down. They should be friendly but professional, not buddy-buddy.
Although I feel safe in my high school, many students don’t because they’re on other students’ bad sides. They make one mistake, and a fight happens.
