Posted on 02/17/2006 3:40:13 PM PST by iPod Shuffle
Feb. 17, 2006, 12:04AM
Multi-student brawl involving evacuees breaks out at Westfield
By CYNTHIA LEONOR GARZA
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle
Tension between local and Hurricane Katrina evacuee students at Spring's Westfield High School flared Wednesday morning with reports of a multi-student fight breaking out before classes started.
The brawl, which started between girls, took place just before 7:30 a.m. in the front foyer of the school, according to students who witnessed it.
"They just starting punching, slapping and pulling hair," said Janae Peck, 17. She described the fight "like a big riot, so out of control."
"I just walked up and got (pulled) in it," said Peck, who added that another large fight happened last week in the school's cafeteria.
Spring Independent School District officials did not comment about the incident any further than issuing a news release that said additional police officers reported to the campus and the principal met with some parents and students.
"The school is investigating the concerns of parents and students," the statement said.
District spokeswoman Regina Curry did not return several phone messages or e-mail messages from the Houston Chronicle asking to clarify how many students were involved, how they were disciplined and how many, if any, were arrested.
As of October, Westfield was home to more evacuee students than any other high school in the Houston area, with 200-plus Katrina students.
Some students from Houston said fights occurred at the school periodically before the influx of evacuees five months ago. But "it got so crowded once New Orleans came over, and it got out of hand," said Brandon Fontenot, 17.
Several students said fights have become a weekly occurrence at the school.
The months that the nearly 20,000 displaced evacuee students have been in Houston-area schools have been marked with fights, arrests and suspensions. Students, parents and experts have said fights have risen out of culture clashes, turf wars and jealousies.
Girls have been fighting a long time. The good news is that they can wear pants now.
One of my employees has had a problem with the school her daughter attends-overrun with Katrina gangstas.
Evey one is finding out what we in New Orleans have had to deal with for decades.
My mother was a school teacher who had to leave the public school system because she got assaulted by a very large black girl.
She then had to drive for an hour and a half, up hill, both ways, to get to the suburbs where she could teach and where she would be treated with the reverence and respect that teachers deserve.
Girls also will hold a grudge forever too.
Yeah. Just trying to throw some humor on a sad situation. It's a shame. Yall have been so generous and supportive. I sometimes wonder if this didn't have anything to do with Rita shifting and Houston not getting a direct hit.
There are some "children" that just need to be left behind, so as to not disrupt the school for the rest of the students. And to serve as a lesson.
I know. I'm 51 and my mother asks if I'm ever going to forget about her giving my dog away when we moved:')
Fact is Spring is what I would call predominatley white upper middle class. Lots of redneck cowgirls to boot.
A few years ago a man i knew, Steve, had a business taking school pictures and selling the photo packages. Steve wanted to know where his best market was and what his biggest moneymaking packages were... so he hired a marketing firm to do survey's, compile the data, and make suggestions. Steve was told his best market was schools with a graduating class of less than 100, and then his next best market was a graduating class of less than 250, and then 400 and anything after that was what they considered just "production photography". So, Steve went and did a little research and found all the schools in the south with typical graduating classes of 100 or less first, did his school pictures sales routine, and then spent his time with larger schools. Interestingly enough, Steve found that in the schools with graduating classes of 100 or less, he typically sold the high dollar picture packages! And he also found that the larger the graduating class, the smaller the picture packages...and when he took pictures and sold packages to schools with larger than 400 students graduating, they almost always picked the $19.95 special. Being an inquisitive fellow, Steve went back to the marketing firm and asked the question: why. Their reply was that in the smaller schools most students had a circle of friends that was typically almost everyone in the graduating class..they all knew each other and the parents knew each other and everyone wanted everyone else to have pictures, and the larger the school, the smaller the circle of friends got, and in the really large highschools, most kids had a circle of close friends around 3 on the average. They also told him of a government study done back in the 60's with rats. The study had been done at a university and the students had put 1 rat in 1 square foot of space...the rat was fine, 3 rats in 3 sq. ft. of space, rats were fine, 10 rats in 10 sq. ft. of space, and they were fine...but when they got out around 100+ rats in an equal sq. ft. area, there came fighting and total chaos, even some deaths...and it wasn't fighting over females or food, it was JUST TOO MANY RATS IN ONE SPOT! Could it be there are simply too many people in one spot sometimes?
"Multi-student brawl involving evacuees breaks out at Westfield"
As opposed to a single student brawl.
Why would any parent in their right mind send a child to this school?
There is really only one valid excuse: They are so poor or so dysfunctional that they have no other choice. And,... if they did not cooperate with the government schools gestapo there would soon be armed police and foster care workers at the door to force attendance.
As opposed to a single student brawl.
I've had a few of those myself.
Yes.
I watched a film in High School science, years ago, that demostrated a few rats in cages. Food, water, and space were ample. However, as the rats reproduced and food, water, and space decreased, the violence, which was previously almost non-existent, shot up.
I move out ot the city 5 years ago.
I live in the woods, in one of the least populated states in the US.
I'm much calmer.
One of the most densly populated places on earth is Hong Kong
Violence there ( at least before the commies took over ) was nothing compared to the major US Cities
Isn't Spring a predominantly white, upper-middle class town, or am I not correct?
The kids were fighting because there were too many rats in the school? Or because they wanted their picture taken.
Maybe they wanted their picture taken with a rat, and were upset because they couldn't?
How do you go up hill, both ways?
One of my employees has had a problem with the school her daughter attends-overrun with Katrina gangstas.""
A friend of mine was in Houston taking care of her father after her mother died.
She couldn't leave fast enough to get herself and her teen age daughter back out of there. Her daughter has some harrowing tales about trying to attend school with the gang members and trash that came in after the hurricane.
I am not talking about a debutante, either. She was scared plenty.
Isn't Spring a predominantly white, upper-middle class town, or am I not correct?""Was---before hurricane. badly infiltrated now.
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