Posted on 09/12/2002 8:28:18 AM PDT by gulfwarvet
School officials fielded anxious phone calls from parents Wednesday, one day after a fight between a Somali student and another teenager broke out at Lewiston High School and turned into an afternoon melee off school grounds.
“What we’re trying to do now is assure parents that we have a very safe school,” said Principal Patrick O’Neill.
Record-setting heat and community friction have caused tensions to rise recently in the 1,250-student high school, officials acknowledged. But, said Superintendent Leon Levesque, “The school has been very calm.”
On Wednesday, disruptions to the school came not from fights but from rampant rumors about weapons and further fights following Tuesday’s brawl near Marcotte Park, in which police arrested two men, neither of whom was a Lewiston High School student.
“It’s completely consumed our day,” said Levesque.
Lewiston police patrolled the area around the high school after school let out Wednesday afternoon. There were no fights.
“Everything was very peaceful and smooth,” said the school system’s Somali community liaison, Mohammed Abdi. He expected similar patrols to continue through the week.
As scheduled, Lewiston High School students will spend this week talking about Sept. 11, its aftermath and effect on Americans’ attitudes toward Muslims and immigrants. No special assemblies or events were planned to address Tuesday’s incident.
According to O’Neill, the confrontation started when a teenager who did not attend Lewiston High School followed a Somali student into the school’s lobby and taunted him. O’Neill said he interceded as the argument became physical and the Somali boy tried to restrain the other teen.
As is school policy, O’Neill suspended the Somali student for three days for his part in the fight. He told the other teenager to leave school property or he would be arrested.
According to police, the high school fight generated a large brawl at 2 p.m. near Marcotte Park. That one involved more than four dozen people.
Levesque said the high school has worked hard to combat rumors and to ease racial tensions there since Somali immigrants began moving into the city a year-and-a-half ago. But friction within the community has begun to cause renewed tension within the school.
While Levesque couldn’t predict whether such friction would lead to more battles at or around Lewiston High School, he hoped to see community leaders identify the issues causing the most contention and come up with resolutions soon.
“I think probably we need to look at this from a community perspective,” he said.
Yeah, I was thinking that this morning when I was first reading the thread. Now that they've been up there, and have their bennies all set up for direct deposit, they'll probably move back down here :-(
Let's be honest and give "thanks" also to the Republicrat law-makers and Presidents - including this one, who've joined the Dem's pander game and also turned a blind eye to this invasion of our country.
You would be very hard put to show any antagonism to any race in my observation, to which you are replying.
If you choose to cry "racism," everytime someone tries to analyze some factor involving human races, in respect to the problems of our times, you perhaps should do a little personal self-examination. Perhaps it is your own racial attitudes that are interfering with your objectivity.
My point was, and is, that the mutually insulting concept that the races require a social experiment in order to progress, and cannot do so without being mixed up with others, has undermined the self-respect and family values of each race afflicted with the idea. I offered a definite example, which can be varified by the skeptics. I could have offered others. But just why are you sure that you even want to object to my point?
While I am not sure of your racial background--and could care less;--my argument was a criticism of the "Liberal" theorists, not the people of any racial or ethnic background. If we cannot discuss the social dynamics, how can we address any social problem?
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
You replied: So you're advocating resegregation?
I am not advocating anything about Maine schools. I was simply making an observation, which I considered pertinent to the subject of this thread. There are many ways that the subject of school assignment can be approached, and rejecting one does not imply another.
Frankly, fixing the sociological mess that is afflicting American public education in many communities, would be no simple proposition. As a Constitutionalist, I believe that decisions pertaining to the criteria for school assignments, should be determined locally. As a believer in the family as the principal factor in both education and the continuity of Society, I would hope that local school districts try to make the local schools both congenial to the families in their district, and to the extent possible an extension of the home.
I do not believe that Maine ever had segregated schools to "resegregate," so your choice of words may be inappropriate. But my comment did not go to the idea of different races attending the same school. That need not be a problem--although in some cases it may involve problems. But my comment went to the deliberate attempt to engineer "racial diversity," not the incidental presence of diverse peoples in the same school. There is an essential difference.
In attending a diverse school, children need to learn tolerance, but they do not have to live with the implication that others are essential to their cultural development. They can progress within their own heritage, seeing their schooling as an extension--not a denial--of their family values, and learn to live and let live with others, at the same time. That is not the problem. The problem is in the idea that we need to be socially made over, which is implied by the notion that it is somehow wrong NOT to go to a racially diverse school.
There are other problems with diversity, and there may be some incidental benefits; but my comment was directed at the idea propounded by some on the Left, that deliberate mixing confers a positive benefit, and the implications of that notion.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
So?
I don't believe you. Your innocent "observations" seem heavily tilted towards segregation.
I do not believe that Maine ever had segregated schools to "resegregate,"
That is correct, largely due to the fact that the 6,600 black Downeasters constitute a whopping .5% of the population, according to the 2000 census. There aren't enough of them to make much difference one way or another in most of the state. But racial tensions exist elsewhere in the country, too, and you seem to be calling for resegregation.
. But my comment went to the deliberate attempt to engineer "racial diversity," not the incidental presence of diverse peoples in the same school. There is an essential difference.
By allowing local Somali children to attend public school, how is the Lewiston school board trying to "engineer racial diversity?" Your comments seem tangential to the issue at hand.
As one of my Mainiac friends says about Maine women and their coffee brandy, "Ass in a glass."
http://www.brook.edu/dybdocroot/wrb/publications/pb/pb15.htm
Refugees and asylees are eligible for all welfare benefits for the first seven years they reside in the U.S., after which their eligibility is greatly reduced. Non-citizens who have worked for ten years and armed forces personnel and their dependents are eligible for all benefits. Finally, some emergency benefits—especially Medicaid—are provided to all non-citizens.http://216.239.53.100/search?q=cache:Yc0c_pHiJE8C:www.visaus.com/benefits.html+refugees++federal++benefits&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Supplemental Security IncomeQ. What is Supplemental Security Income (SSI)?
A. SSI is a federally-funded program that provides cash benefits to low-income people who are aged, blind, or disabled. Since SSI is a federal program, the rules about which noncitizens are eligible are the same regardless of the state in which one lives. SSI is administered by the Social Security Administration.Q. Can refugees receive SSI benefits?
A. Refugees can receive SSI benefits if they meet all the requirements for eligibility (such as having limited income and resources and being aged or disabled) and meet one of the following six criteria:
All refugees during their first seven years in the U.S. During their first seven years in the U.S., low-income refugees are eligible for SSI under the same rules as native-born citizens. This rule applies to all refugees, regardless of when they entered the country or whether they have adjusted their status since entering the U.S.
By allowing local Somali children to attend public school, how is the Lewiston school board trying to "engineer racial diversity?" Your comments seem tangential to the issue at hand.
I do not believe that the Lewiston school board is the one playing the social engineer here. But the sudden infusion of a substantial number of children from a radically different background into this local school is analogous to the experiments--such as bussing--that have taken place under the guise of deliberately promoting "diversity," elsewhere. And, frankly, I do not believe that this Somali community just spontaneously moved to Maine. They came as a group, and do not appear to be really part of the established Lewiston community. Therefore, the question arises how to handle the situation.
That analysis needs to start with a recognition that diversity is not some sort of inevitable benefit. And it probably would be better in this instance, if they had a separate school for these children--one run not by the people of Lewiston, but by their own parents, who understand their traditional values. (Wasn't it because they were being picked on for their eccentricities, which supposedly led to their being resettled over here?)
Beyond that, of course, our whole immigration policy needs to be questioned. But it looks likes it may be too late for that in Lewiston.
William Flax
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