Feb. 4, Mr. Martinez announced his idea of banning students from the courtyard for a whole week. The reason for the ban was due to a few students fighting and even students spectating said fights. Administration decided that banning students from stepping into the square was the best response.
First off, the ban was completely over the line. To quote Frank Zappa, ” It’s like treating head lice with decapitation”.
Because a few select people can’t work out their issues without trying to force their fists down each others throats, the entire student populace must be punished. Even the spectator aspect of the problem is pointless excuse.
They could try to break up the fight, but even the most peaceful interference will be treated like an extra punch and you will be punished as severely as the fighters.
No, you call over an AP, which takes long enough, only for them to call over the security guard. This alone will take a few minutes. During this time, if this punishment sinks in, the students should look away from said fight and pretend like two people aren’t beating each other like a drum.
The fact that students spectate these fights is not a reason to punish them.
Take a crash on the highway for example. If we applied this logic, those drivers are just as responsible as the man who got drunk and rode his car off the road.
Head lice, meet decapitation. It’s not a way of egging on the fights, it’s a matter of fascination. We didn’t want the driver to crash it just happened. It’s not unreasonable to stare for a few moments. This ban sends the message that fascination is a punishable offense.
This, as we all know, wasn’t the first time that Martinez has banned the courtyard during lunch. Last year, the principal banned students from the courtyard multiple times, stating that litter had become an issue. Banning the entire student body implies that everyone decides to throw their trash into the middle of courtyard while we all laugh and throw rocks at the poor custodian who has to clean it up.
This ban made no sense. The reason behind this wasn’t the well being of the students, it’s was due to the fact that the administrators find it to laborious and time consuming to actually find the people responsible for the offending act. If these students can’t conduct themsleves in a wide open space, the only reasonable thing was to move them to a smaller environment, aka, the cafeteria. The cafeteria is packed enough as it is, now we are just stuffing more people into it. These students that want to fight each other were being packed into an area where they were closer to each other.
If your children are fighting, the simple solution is it put them in a small cramped room where they will be close to each other. They’ll get along in no time.
So, with all these complaints, I must have a incredibly insightful solution to this problem right?
Yes.
Go after the people responsible for the fights, not the student body for witnessing them.
Just as you wouldn’t ban all driving because of a few drunk drivers, you should not ban the entire courtyard because of a few fights.
