What’s all the beef about?

Dr. Hensley speaks to impact of physical violence between students on administration, student body, learning environment

Dr. Melissa Hensley has been a school administrator for 18 years and a principal for all but two of those years. Over the course of her career, she has learned the common practices used in high schools in relation to student disagreements and altercations, as well as the challenges that come along with these practices. 

Arriving at the semester mark of the 2022-23 school year, there have been a total of 10 physical fights in school. According to Hensley, this number is smaller than in past years. 

“Six, seven, eight years ago, the data looks much different. The number of fights is coming down. Last year we had less than 20 fights, I think it was around 14 the entire year. That’s everything, considering [if you compare] a pretty heated [verbal] dispute to a [physical] dispute,” Hensley said. 

Comparing these numbers to other schools in our area is difficult as Harrisonburg High School is overcrowded, holding 1,966 students, compared to surrounding high schools such as Spotswood High School with around 936 students and Turner Ashby High School with around 1,014 students. The middle schools in the area, Skyline Middle School and Thomas Harrison Middle School, both hold around 705 students. Hensley believes this unavoidable close contact between students during passing periods can spark feelings of anxiety that may lead to physical altercations. 

“We’re at a different level, our school is very overcrowded. The middle schools have far fewer students in them. The majority of our fights happen [during] second breakfast which is the largest population that we have in the commons area. You’ve got students coming out of the gym, all of the outside coming in and most of the upstairs and the rest of the building coming towards that area either to go to class, to get breakfast or to find friends and socialize,” Hensley said. “For some students, the overcrowding creates a sense of anxiety and I think puts some students on edge than what we would see if we didn’t have so many people compacted together. I think it’s pretty hard for some to navigate [and] they become on the defensive quicker,” Hensley said. 

Administration and counseling work together to find the best solution for both verbal and physical disagreements. The school offers mediation and restorative practices to get to the root of the problem or can also put in place a stricter solution such as disciplinary practices or a no-contact order. 

“I don’t believe in violence as a means to resolving any conflict that students have. There’s disciplinary consequences, we also do restorative practices when it’s appropriate too. We have been doing a lot of preventative stuff too to try to get in front of disagreements. [We try to] resolve them in some way either through conferences with admin [or] working with school counselors. A lot of times if we get the students together, they’re able to talk it out and we’re able to resolve it. A lot of what we see is community based, where disagreements have spilled over into the school. We do a lot of things like separating kids who have had ongoing disagreements with one another where we have not been successful with restorative practices. We try to make sure they’re not in classes together [or] put no-contact orders in place to try to ensure that it’s not going to happen again,” Hensley said. 

Both administration and teachers must be trained in how to handle these situations to the best of their ability. Faculty and staff are taught Mandt training when they are hired to put in place when needed. The strategies are not directed at teaching faculty and staff how to separate fights, but more so how to de-escalate a situation full of high emotions through verbal means. 

“Mandt training focuses on utilizing verbal skills to de-escalate and recognize people that are in the crisis cycle. When you enter that crisis cycle, we have a baseline where we normally operate at. Anything thereafter starts through the crisis cycle where you reach a climax and then you eventually start to come back down and go through various phases. Each one of those phases, we are trained in what to do to best help a student at that level of crisis. Mandt training [also includes] guided assist strategies and a component on how to separate fights. It’s a little unrealistic, the way that they train it versus what we see, but we can manipulate some of those skills to guide people away from situations. There’s also a timer to that, so as soon as there is a Mandt hold being used, we’re timing it because at three minutes we have to let go. This training has some definite advantages to it, I like the verbal component,” Hensley said. 

Going into her career as a school administrator, Hensley was aware of the variety of challenges she would face on a day to day basis, however shifting between different high school environments has been a change of pace. 

“I wasn’t naive to what to expect in this role, but I would say you don’t know what you’re getting into until you really walk in this position. It’s also different from school to school in terms of what the themes are that you see that need to be addressed and that you didn’t anticipate. I think these things are always going to exist. I came here from Shenandoah County, very different clientele here, very different yet [the] same in terms of some of the needs,” Hensley said. 

Hensley recognizes the emotional aspect that may affect the student body who have witnessed fights between their peers. 

“Because of the nature of those fights, it probably causes more anxiety for a lot of students because they are so heated. It takes multiple adults to get those kids separated and there’s usually a lot of high emotions. I would think that that would make it a very uneasy situation for a lot of other people that are here,” Hensley said. 

Despite such high emotions, administration asks students to refrain from crowding or taking videos to ensure the safety of all students. 

“It would help for safety purposes if students would back away and not be taking videos [or] getting in those clusters around them. There are times when we have a very difficult time getting to the center to separate it. I know when things happen, the natural response of most humans is to look into what’s going on. Most people are also looking to see if there is something they can do to help the situation. Ultimately, it’s a draw of attention, I don’t think most of the students are trying to put themselves in a position where they themselves could get hurt. I think it’s the curiosity of what’s going on. The ultimate goal is for everybody to be safe and healthy here. I get it, we see something, we’re certainly going to look, the dangerous piece really becomes when we get in those tight groups and we have a harder time getting to the center of that,” Hensley said. “I also don’t know that posting somebody else’s conflict on social media is in the best interest of anyone. I think that that has a lot of harmful ramifications. It perpetuates other situations occurring sometimes. I think it puts out a perception of our school that’s not accurate. I don’t feel like we have more fights than any other traditional high school of this size,” Hensley said. 

Despite what some students may expect, asking for help before a conflict occurs will not result in consequences. 

“[Consequences] are not the goal. From there, we talk about what can we do at this point? What’s the conflict? Is admin going to be the right person to try to mediate? Are we interested in mediation, restorative practices [or] any of the other services that we have? We’ve got a variety of things we can do If students would come and let us know. There’s no consequence [for that]. I ultimately don’t think students really want to be in those situations,” Hensley said. “We do get students who come to a school counselor and say ‘I’m having this conflict, I’m really concerned about this person potentially trying to do something to me.’ That’s very helpful because we can then intervene on the front end of that and have conversations before anything happens. There’s no penalty for asking for help and resolving conflicts. We’re not giving out a consequence because you came to us and said ‘I think I’m going to get in a fight.’ We’re looking for how we can resolve this issue so that nobody gets a consequence out of it.”

Cullip shares anxieties about school fights as high school teacher

Computer science teacher Lorinda Cullip is a first year teacher and has experienced the realities of the high school environment up close throughout her first semester. 

“I came here with no training other than knowing the background material. I thought, ‘I had six kids, I can do this, it can’t be that hard,’ but let me tell you, it’s the hardest job I’ve ever had in my life,” Cullip said.  

Cullip experienced her first school fight one afternoon when walking down to the lunchroom. She was disturbed by the student reactions to the commotion. 

“All of a sudden I saw all these students wanting to go over there. I was really surprised. They seemed excited, like they were witnessing some sporting event which was really bizarre. They had their phones and they were trying to video. I was really shocked and disturbed that instead of being afraid because someone was getting hurt, they were almost encouraging. It made me sick to my stomach to be honest,” Cullip said. 

Experiencing this early in her teaching career frightened Cullip as she felt unprepared in knowing how to help students. This experience has taken a mental toll on her, recounting a nightmare she had that night. 

“As an employee of the school system, my job is to teach and protect, to nurture and care for these students, I couldn’t do anything, I was so afraid. I didn’t know what to do. I felt like I was not trained to know what to do. I’m sure that there was some kind of online training that I have gone through, but to tell you the truth, it’s so overwhelming as a first year teacher that in the moment, I was paralyzed,” Cullip said. “I was glad to see that others knew what to do. Administrators came, the SRO came and they took care of the situation, but it really, really shook me up.” 

Cullip’s daughter, Megan Cullip, is a biology teacher here as well. After witnessing this altercation, Cullip went to her daughter’s classroom for support. 

“She recognizes that [fights] happen and she said that [they’ve been] happening more. I don’t want to say she thinks it’s normal, [but] I guess she is more used to it than I am because she’s been here a few years,” Cullip said. 

Similarly, she was surprised to learn the high school requires two school resource officers (SRO’s).

“I know that we have resource officers here and just the fact that we need that is crazy in my mind. I went to high school 40 plus years ago. We didn’t have that. I could not imagine having to deal with this kind of stuff on a daily basis, being a resource officer or being an administrator that knows how to handle that or has to pull people apart,” Cullip said.

Cullip is frightened for her grandchildren who are already in middle school and will soon enter the high school environment with the possibility of being exposed to these events. She names overcrowding as a possible source of the problem. 

“It terrifies me that they could be exposed to stuff like this in just a few years. As a parent, it’s terrifying. Is the ratio between administrators and teachers and students too high? If we’re over capacity, we shouldn’t be allowed to go over capacity. I don’t feel safe,” Cullip said.

Cullip believes to continue to get young adults excited about becoming teachers, something must be done to put an end to these events. 

“I’m brand new to this on the outside, but still, I’m not a young teacher just out of college that hasn’t seen the world. I’ve seen the world. I have a lot of life experiences and there’s some things that just aren’t right. If we’re going to attract teachers and attract talent, there’s a lot in my mind that needs to change,” Cullip said. 

More than anything, Cullip questions not just the high school environment, but also society when it comes to how they react to violence. She firmly believes it’s time for a change. 

“It makes me very scared for my daughter who works here, for myself, for the other teachers and it really turns my stomach that the students find this not only routine, but exciting,” Cullip said. “How did we get to a point in society where we’re okay watching someone hurt someone else? That’s just so incredibly sad.” 

SRO’s Terrell, Bowers speak to job description abilities, keeping school safe

Walking into the school cafeteria, it’s hard not to notice the two police officers in full uniform: wearing tactical vests, with handcuffs and a sidearm, keeping watch over the students in that area. These police officers are better known as school resource officers (SRO’s) and their job is to keep students safe during the school day. 

According to the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services, “A school resource officer is a certified law enforcement officer hired by the local law enforcement agency to provide law enforcement and security services to Virginia public elementary and secondary schools. They are assigned by the law enforcement agency to work in one or more schools, but remain under the administrative control of the law enforcement agency.” 

SRO’s Ronnie Bowers and new addition, Chris Terrell ensure that all aspects of HHS are operating in a safe and secure fashion. Both officers previously worked with the Harrisonburg Police Department before taking a demotion to work in the high school. 

“I’ve been a police officer for 25 years, through that time I’ve been a road officer, bike officer, investigator and most recently I was a supervisor. I actually took a demotion to come to work here at the school because I just wanted to make a difference in kids’ lives,” Terrell said. 

While Terrell has just recently come to the school, Bowers has been the high school’s SRO for over five years.

“I volunteered to come to HHS, as crazy as that sounds, but my reasoning for coming here was because I worked the night shift most of my career as a patrol unit out on the streets just answering daily routine calls and I wanted the day shift spot. This was the only spot open. Once I got here and started doing the job, I really enjoyed it,” Bowers said. 

When a fight occurs in school, one of the main concerns SRO’s consider is the overcrowding and likeliness it may result in a bigger issue. When the current school building opened in 2005, it was designed to accommodate 1,350 students, yet it currently holds 1,966 students. 

“First and foremost [we are focused on maintaining] safety. When two students are fighting, I’m absolutely going to step in to try to keep them from harming each other, or other people because it’s very crowded. That’s my number one role, it’s not to arrest them or discipline them, [but] rather to keep people safe,” Bowers said. “For the most part, the administration typically handles that, but again, I’m not going to stand back and let someone get hurt.”

According to the Legal Aid Justice Center, “while stationed in schools, SROs have full police authority over students and staff. This means they can stop, question, charge, arrest, use chemical and mechanical restraints, and use other police practices on students and staff. SRO’s should not be involved in school discipline matters.”

Even though SRO’s have these abilities, things that aren’t putting groups of students in immediate danger, such as vaping, is left up to administration to deal with as a “disciplinary matter.”

“The school and the police department have what we call a MOU, a Memorandum of Understanding, which is a contract between the schools and the police that says ‘Hey this is what you guys can do and this is what we don’t want you to do.’ Probably the biggest difference is if there’s an emergency compared to a nonemergency,” Bowers said. “If there’s a fight, we try to break it up, if anyone would ever try to do any harm to the school, we will obviously try to step in and intervene. [However], when it comes to minor things, say vaping, which is illegal under the age of 21, we stay back and let the school handle it. Out on the street it’s different, if you saw someone who was 16 vaping, you could go deal with it and not think twice about it.” 

Administration has certain training such as Mandt Training, where they are not allowed to hold onto a student for more than three minutes and can only use a Mandt hold (a specific hold so they don’t physically endanger the student) to separate a fight or altercation. Comparatively, SRO’s have no such restrictions.  

“We’re not restricted as police officers. We are trained to do certain control moves that we practice. We will use the amount of force we need to control the student, we’re not going to immediately just use [excessive force] where it’s not needed,” Bowers said. “We’re not limited as to how long [we restrain a student] and what we can do to break up a fight.”

According to an article from Vox, “The key to understanding use-of-force policies is that, for the most part, they’re not designed to set limits on police. Instead, they’re designed as a way to guide police toward using appropriate types of force — which includes everything from verbal commands to lethal weapons.”

SRO’s go through training just like any other police officer. It helps them to know how exactly to restrain someone if it is needed to keep everyone safe. 

“We go through ‘use of force training.’ You learn a lot of it in [the] basic police academy and then once you leave there, your department once a year, will expand on that. Sometimes literally just talking to people, we will consider the use of force, to know what to say and how to say it to try and talk people down. That’s our number one main goal, but sometimes, that’s not an option,” Bowers said. “[Beyond that], we’re taught to use physical restraints, by manipulating hands and fingers and arms or pressure points where the nerves are, to control that person. Then it can go from there. You can step it up, depending on their resistance. We do a lot of physical training, we don’t just watch a video. We physically grab hold of each other as police officers so we know what it feels like, how it works and how it doesn’t work.”

Beyond just working with students physically, Bowers and Terrell also work with the counselors and parents.

“I work with the counselors a lot, some of the students will come with problems at home or issues in their personal life, so we work with them. We’re not counselors, but we’re very informal counselors, so we deal with that a lot,” Bowers said. “We have parents that will come and ask questions, like what to do when their kids are acting up at home, so we do a lot behind the scenes. We really do.”

Even though the job involves risks, Terrell and Bowers enjoy their interactions with students each day more than anything else. 

“I’ve always been a talker and I like to make people smile, so I try to make sure as many kids as I can talk to here have a better day,” Terrell said. 

What happens after fight: students speak about what it means to be on other side

“Fights give people something to talk about,” sophomore Natnael Weldu said. 

Music was blasting through Senior Kim Sanchez-Zarate’s earbuds while she walked through the halls. She had just finished her first block and was on the way to her second block. Her eyes were glued to her phone. She was scrolling through Instagram when she found a video of herself walking into a fight. The fight had broken out a couple feet away from her, she hadn’t noticed at the time, only while scrolling through Instagram later did she come upon the video. 

“[I didn’t notice] the fight that started right [beside] me because I just kept walking [through] blasting my music. Then later I saw the fight on Instagram. It was like 38 seconds ago and I was like ‘what I was literally just right there,’” Sanchez-Zarate said.

Students often, after a school fight, see it posted on different platforms of social media.

“I usually see them through Instagram or Snapchat. Sometimes I like watching it, sometimes it’s just confusing,” Sanchez-Zarate said. 

Seeing fights on social media is not a rare student occurrence. In fact, accounts across all platforms have been dedicated to just posting about HHS fights. 

“I remember there used to be one account that posted about every fight that happened, but it got banned [through Instagram guidelines],” Sanchez-Zarate said. 

These videos are shared and reposted frequently. Students like sophomores Yulliana Ayala and Natnael Weldu have first-hand experience with fights on social media. They both acknowledge how fast fight videos spread.

“It spreads around and I get it from others who are spreading it around,” Ayala said. 

Weldu sees more fights on some platforms over others. 

“I see the most fights on Snapchat because a lot of people post them on their stories. A lot of people view and share those fight stories. Sometimes I know the person, sometimes I don’t know the person,” Weldu said. 

Ayala and Weldu both noted that when a fight starts, students gather around and become much more lively.

“It’s not that I like violence, it’s just [I like] to see who is fighting and who is going to win. I like to find out why someone is fighting [and] to see if it’s a stupid reason or if it’s actually a good reason for the fight,” Ayala said. 

Weldu agreed with her statement.

“Everyone reposts it and everyone shares it around because they want to show their friends,” Weldu said. 

Sophomore Christan Rashad Settles was in a fight with another student when bystanders started recording him. 

“After the fight I left everything at the school, my backpack and my phone. I didn’t come back until later for my phone and it was blowing up, everyone was texting me,” Rashad Settles said. 

He saw himself in the video and so did 500 other people. Looking back, Rashad Settles feels negatively about the situation after seeing it on Instagram.  

“I saw myself on Instagram and I was disappointed in myself. I feel like I could have taken that situation and dealt with it way differently,” Rashad Settles said. 

According to Rashad Settles, many individuals judged him after they saw the video. 

“The truth is I’m not a bad person, but people and teachers judge me based on this one clip. It happens all the time to me. I understand why they would judge me based on that video, but we’re all humans and have bad reactions to things,” Rashad Settles said. 

He expected students to record the fight he was involved in. He views this student behavior as normal, despite how it made him feel. 

“I expected people to record me when we fought. Most kids my age when something unexpected happens they start recording,” Rashad Settles said. 

While school fights have been happening for as long as most students can remember, the heightened use of social media and spreading videos has only recently become a popular thing. Students may see violence as entertainment and overlook the psychological impact of fights. Doctor Lora Cantwell, the former school psychologist, describes this as desensitization.

“[Younger generations] have access to everything, so they get desensitized. If something is seen 10 times and [you] see it again [you’re] not going to react to it anymore. There is a different reaction for the younger generation to violence and aggression,” Cantwell said. 

Cantwell further explains the differences between generations when it comes to fights in school. 

“When I was growing up, it just didn’t happen [like it is now]. There wasn’t a lot of planning. It was spontaneous. Whereas now it’s, you get people involved, and there’s a lot of chatter beforehand. There’s a lot of energy going into it. I’ve heard stories of people taking Ubers to a fight. It’s crazy to see technology used in that way, ”Cantwell said. 

Cantwell emphasizes the difference of fight culture between generations. 

“When we were growing up and [fights] happened, we got a break from it, we went home and our system got a chance to recover,” Cantwell said.  

The opposite happens for the younger generation. Fights do not stop when students stop fighting, but it continues further through the use of technology.

“For [students now] it doesn’t stop. You leave [school] and you’re dealing with it around the clock because people are posting [about the fights],” Cantwell said.

Fighting can interrupt school day, learning environment

“Most of the time I think fights are started by two people beefing over something. Sometimes it might be over a girl or a guy, or they will just get into an argument and then just start fighting. I do think some people just like fighting, so I feel like some people fight in our school just because,” Spears said. 

A lot of the time the cause of the fight between students is unknown to the onlookers. The fight could have been provoked by something outside of school, days before.

“Most of the time I don’t actually know what they are fighting about, but sometimes I just see it as two people getting mad so they fight. I think a lot of times it can be a little petty,” Spears said. “It is a simple conversation that can happen, but instead they just fight. I don’t think it solves anything if you fight someone, you are just going to get more mad at them. The issue before the fight is still there because you didn’t talk about it, so you couldn’t solve anything. I don’t really think it is even a way to solve problems.”