THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 20, 1996 TAG: 9603200696
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON GLASS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 134 lines
There was nothing pretty about the early morning brawl that erupted last month in a hallway at Lake Taylor High School, 10th-grader Larry Knight said. Knight, 17, said he walked into chaos when he entered the building about 20 minutes before classes were to start.
``A lot of people got caught up in it,'' Knight said. ``There were shirts ripped, hair everywhere, crying, trash everywhere. Security guards tried to stop it but they couldn't break it up.''
Police helped restore order. More than 30 students were suspended, most of them for refusing to go to class after the fighting was stopped, Principal John Osteen said. Three students were suspended for 10 days; they were the only ones officials could identify fighting. The others received three-day suspensions.
Most of the students involved in the ruckus are back in the 1,600-student school, and the peace has been restored.
But the tensions that sparked the fight, say students, school administrators and police, spring from long-standing neighborhood rivalries that continue to fester. These tensions could spill into the school at any time, those interviewed say.
The seeds of the latest fight were planted a day earlier after two boys from rival neighborhoods exchanged words while waiting to board a bus after school.
No weapons were found after the fight, but there have been a number of cases in South Hampton Roads over the past five years of teens turning to guns and violence to settle disputes.
Knight, voicing concerns shared by many students, said, ``It's making the kids more scared. It's stopping the learning - the education process.''
Middle schools and high schools throughout the region face similar problems, which have defied solutions.
Herman D. Clark Jr., principal of Bowling Park Elementary, recently asked the School Board to allow him to expand his school to include grades 6-8. Among his reasons: To reduce discipline problems caused when students from Bowling Park and nearby Roberts Park Elementary, which serves a rival neighborhood, get tossed together at Azalea Gardens Middle.
``We can't just close our eyes to it, and if it's happening around us we've got to do something about it,'' Clark said. ``It's everybody's concern.''
Some Lake Taylor students said the school needs to beef up security, which now is provided by four security officers. Others suggested sending students from feuding neighborhoods to different schools.
Osteen, who is searching for solutions with community leaders and parents, said schools sometimes make uneasy mixing pots for students.
``We try to make it Titan territory, and not Diggs Town or Oakleaf territory,'' he said of the school nickname, mentioning two neighborhoods involved in student disputes.
``Why they had the clash goes back to feelings that have been harbored for a long time,'' said Osteen, who can monitor hallway activity on a TV in his office that is connected to video cameras mounted in the building - part of the school's security efforts to maintain control.
``Until we eliminate the hate between these young people,'' Osteen said, ``we're never going to resolve the conflict.''
Students say the disputes, which include girls and boys, usually start small, between a couple of kids from different neighborhoods: They might mouth off at each other, or there could be jealousy involving a girlfriend or a boyfriend, or clothes, or money, or drugs.
A melee that broke out at Lake Taylor's homecoming football game in 1994 stemmed from an encounter at a pep rally between students from those same two neighborhoods, students said. One student had ripped a necklace off the other. Later at the game, the two rivals showed up with entourages of neighborhood friends, including nonstudents, and a near riot ensued. Police sprayed students with pepper gas.
Last fall, the school canceled a pep rally and its homecoming dance because of tension in the school.
Most of the neighborhoods involved harbor high concentrations of poverty, and also have their share of crime, drugs and violence, which contribute to the problem, police and other officials say.
``When you're left out of society's piece of the pie, those things like turf, territory and neighborhood becomes your family, your BMW, your Rolodex, your stock market, and that's all they have,'' said John Horton, who coordinates a school truancy program for the city's Division of Social Services. ``Things are not going to change until somebody says, `It starts with us in this household.' The family is the best department of health, education and welfare, and salvation.''
There have been cases in juvenile court, police say, resulting from a teenager from one neighborhood having been jumped and beaten up - students call it getting ``banked'' - by a group from another neighborhood.
That often leads to retaliation. The groups have ``back up'' at school.
``We've had people assaulted for just being in the wrong neighborhood,'' said M.R. Crank, senior investigator for the Police Department's gang squad.
Crank said the neighborhood students who hang out together are not a ``gang'' in the strictest sense, but the network performs the same function as a gang - support, companionship, belonging and in some cases criminal activity.
The clashes dismay community leaders and most students, who say that only a few trouble makers are to blame. ``I don't hate any neighborhood,'' said Shalonda Short, 16, a 10th-grader at Lake Taylor who lives in Berkley and wants to go to college to become a pediatrician. ``I go to school to get an education so I can graduate. I try my best to stay out of trouble.''
A 10th-grade boy from Berkley who asked not to be identified said: ``You can't base a whole neighborhood on a few people. There's a lot of good people in this neighborhood. It ain't all bad.''
Robert Miles, 29, a former Norfolk State University football player and now teen coordinator at the Southside Boys and Girls Club in Berkley, has organized a community meeting for 6 p.m. today at the club to discuss teen violence, in part because of the recent Lake Taylor fight.
``As African Americans, they should be pulling together to make each other stronger rather than battling each other,'' Miles said.
Ronney L. Washington, a security officer at Lake Taylor High for the past 16 years, said most of the students at the school are ``good-hearted kids.''
``You might find two or three who are bad, and they're the ones calling the shots,'' Washington said. ``The others are followers and are confused.''
Byron Joyce, director of the Campostella Boys and Girls Club, said adults, particularly parents, are failing many of these children.
``We get what we grow,'' Joyce said. ``We planted these seeds and now we don't like the crop. . . . Children need help and we as adults need to provide it for them.''
Joyce said administrators need to do some ``soul searching'' to help students learn to work together. Miles at the Southside Club said the school system needs to do a better job of ``weeding out'' the bad apples and placing them in alternative classes so they don't disrupt others. He also said school officials might help resolve problems if they took the time to understand the neighborhoods.
Betty Clark, mother of six boys, including two at Bowling Park Elementary, said, ``You've got to try to save that child on the other side of the fence. All you've got to do is show these children some love and understanding and you wouldn't see all these statistics.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
LAWRENCE JACKSON/The Virginian-Pilot
Robert Miles, coordinator at the Southside Boys and Girls Club in
Norfolk, conducts after-school programs there.
by CNB