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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (March 18, 1988)
Schools in the Danger Zone An inner-city education provides more than just a report card Ted waits behind Burlington City High School in Burlington, NJ. The area is a well-known hangout for students and a mar ketplace for drugs. But Ted, a former student at the high school, is not interested in drugs today. Nor is he interested in meeting with friends at the ap proaching lunch hour. He’s wait ing for Johnny. He’s waiting for revenge. A week before, Johnny accused Ted of stealing his coat. During the week, the two taunted each other in the halls and out on the street. When school administra tors discovered that Ted had the coat, they expelled him. Now Ted, concealing a screwdriver, waits patiently for his accuser. At lunch break, the students begin leaving school. They go about their business—some head ing for the many fast-food chains in the neighborhood, others head ing across the street to buy and sell drugs. IV 71_ FI _ rrricn junnny appears, lea takes out the screwdriver. Johnny spots Ted and runs. Ted follows. I The chase continues for afewfeet; \ then Johnny tries to leap a nearby bush, but trips and falls into it. i Ted catches him at the bush and jabs at the entangled body four times, connecting twice. Johnny untangles himself and eventually eludes Ted. Johnny’s wounds aren’t seri ous, but later the police charge Ted with assault. harles Fryar witnessed a incident similar to this one while he was a high school student in Burlington. Fryar, a junior at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a comer back for the Nebraska football team, says he has also seen many fights and some riots. Burlington, a school of about 3,000 students, is near a ghetto and is 85 to 90 percent black, Fryar says. Students need identification cards to get into the school and passes when they arc in the halls. This policy, Fryar says, keeps out non-students who might cause trouble, such as drug pushers. Many other high schools across i the United States suffer problems like those at Burlington. In the last 40 years, many inner-city schools have experienced rampant drug use, gangs, high enrollment and poor instruction. Jay Corzine, an associate pro fessor of sociology at UNL, says some inner-city schools suffer because they arc supported through local property taxes. Poor neighborhoods pay less taxes and schools can’t afford to pay good teachers, he says. Cor/.inc, who did research at McKinley High School in St. j Louis during 1974-75, says stu dents who are enrolled in poor inner-city high schools know the education is poor. As a result, they find other activities to occupy their time, he says. Fryar says most Burlington students didn’t attend school to learn. “It was a social thing,” Fryar says. “Everybody came to school to sec everybody else.” Linetta Wilson, a UNL senior, agreed with Fryar. Wilson, who attended John Muir High School in Pasadena, Calif., says student were there to hang out rather than learn. She says the school em ployed about eight security guards. “When you’re doing other things, your interest in school is not there,” says Wilson, a member of the Nebraska track team. “You go to school to meet with some body and do other things.” Those other things include joining gangs, fighting and taking drugs. Many students are forced into doing hem because of peer pressure and ear. < rryar says drug use was com non at Burlington. I “If you’re not doing drugs, you’re pushing them,” Fryar says. Drugs are so common, Fryar says, that he often carried on con versations in the street with friends who were looking to make a sale. From time to time, his friends stopped the conversation, walked a few feet away and made a sale, Fryar says. This acceptance of drugs also was prevalent at Muir. Wilson says drugs were so common at Muir that even the teachers took them. “Like, if you’re not doing drugs, there’s something wrong with you,’’ Wilson says. Corzinc says the effect of drugs on students is obvious. “If you got a kid who’s getting stoned a lot in school, then he’s probably not getting a hell of a lot out of it,” he says. Drugs also lead to violence, Cor/ine says. Drug users arc not thugs, but pushers often try to monopolize the drug radc by violently eliminating or ntimidating their competitors. Violent schools also sprout in ■ough neighborhoods, Corzinc ;ays. Street gangs terrorize the neighborhoods and schools. Wilson says two gangs roamed he halls at Muir: the Bloods and he Crips. Wilson was a member of one of he gangs, although she wouldn’t ay which one. She joined, as did nany other students, for protec ion and self-esteem, she says. “If you walk around with five or ix girls,’’ Wilson says, “nobody’s j going lo mess with you. “We helped each other out. We didn’t have to take burdens upon ourselves. And if somebody both ered us (or) we were scared about something, we took care of that together.” Fighting usually was how they took care of problems. Wilson says her gang fought about once a week. But the gang didn’t always fight for protection. Sometimes they fought over insults, Wilson says. Other times they would just fight another gang on the street. Wilson says she has mel lowed since then. She says she has lost the macho attitude she had in high school and now concentrates on track and school. Gangs arc a thing of the past for her, but not for Pasadena or for her home in Altcnda, Calif. “They’re still going on out there,.and they’re as serious as ever,” she says. Gang fights also erupted at Martin Luther King Jr. High School on the south side of Chi cago, where UNL freshman Rich ard Smith went to school. Smith >ays 15 gangs roamed the halls at King. Smith, a 6-foot-7 forward on he Nebraska basketbal 1 team, says the gangs would fight over any thine. “They’d fight over crap games in the bathroom,” Smith says, “or somebody might have sold some body some tea instead of some reefer.” Smith says the gangs also fight with anything. On the first school day of his senior year, he says, two gangs got into a belt fight in front of the school. Other students car ried knives and a few carried guns, he says. Smith says he was walking to basketball practice one day when he saw a student with a gun. The student, running toward Smith, had the gun pointed toward the ceiling. “I don’t know what he was doing or who he was after, but I ran into the gym and went under the bleachers,” Smith says. Smith says he doesn’t know what happened alter that. But he heard no shots. Smith says such incidents weren’t common at his high school, but he wasn’t surprised when they happened. Violence and intimidation were more com mon, he says, and it takes its toll on students. Many are afraid to attend school, he says. “It’s hard to go to school when you know somebody’s going to beat you up and take your money,” Smith says. Students by themselves are vulnerable. But students in a group are protected. As a result, many students are ?ressured to join gangs, Smith Smith says. Peer pressure and the desire to be accepted also pressure them, he says. “They don’t want to get picked on,” Smith says. “They want to pick on people.” Smith says King administrators tried to correct some of the prob lems by having police patrol the halls and lunch room. The police did well to keep order inside the school, Smith says, but they couldn’t control violence outside. King also used assistant princi pal Melver Scott, who could keep control. “He knew everything that was going down,” Smith said. Wilson says Muir adminis trators developed a 13 point system. Students who lost all 13 points were trans ferred to a reform school, Wilson says. Muir students lost points for being tardy or being caught in the halls during class, she says. Other wrongdoings brought on a punish ment familiar to most high schools — detention. Other administrators at inner city schools take more drastic measures. Joe Clark, principal at Easlsidc High in Paterson, N.J., has received much attention from the media for expelling drug push ers and students who don’t earn any credits. i !“sJlrst year at Eastsidc in J-^ expelled 300 students. When he was accused of expelling 66 students without due process last December, the media attention returned. Some believe he has turned a school that was full of drug push ers and thugs into a safe place where education can be nurtured. Two of Clark’s supporters are President Reagan and Secretary of Education William Bennett, who have called Clark a tough leader. ; But others aren’t so quick to praise Clark’s approach. Thomas Christie, a so ciology teacher at Lincoln High School, says Clark has quick an swers for complicated problems. Christie, who attended Wana maker Junior High in a Philadel phia ghetto during the early 1960s, says Clark is “full of crap.” Christie says he thinks some students need alternatives to high school. But Clark’s reference to students as “leeches and parasites” is degrading and his expulsions without due process are unneces sary, Christie says. “If (Clark) wants to be great, Christie says, “why doesn’t he leach kids to lobby the city council or the police department so they treat people with more dignity in those neighborhoods. If he wants to be great, why doesn’t he set up gang relations with the scluxil and gang leaders in the community." Cor/.inc says that although he doesn’t appreciate Clark’s methods, his “get tough’’ attitude is the only solution in some cases. Clark hasn’t made significant improvements in edu cation, Corzine says, but he has made the school a safe place. “Given the limitations of what you have to work with, it’s proba
