Students at George Washington High School fear to come on campus

By: Alexa Marroquin (Staff writer)

Students at George Washington High School claim that they feel more unsafe as the school year continues as the increase in physical altercations and lack of security. Cause uneasy feelings in students at GWHS.

 As a result students tend to feel more insecure on campus as a concern grows for their safety. Students stated in different interviews and a survey out of 39 interviewees that 48.7% of students have been afraid to step onto GWHS campus because of a safety issue. Which is an issue as if students feel afraid to be on campus they will tend to either not come or choose to set aside their education because of their fear of being on campus.

Therefore, students rated how safe they feel while on GWHS campus from a scale of 1-5 with 1 feeling the most unsafe and 5 being feeling the safest. Students responded with 43.6% reporting they felt at a level 3 of feeling safe while on campus. Aswell as a student commented “I noticed several fights quite often here, both physical, and verbal. It ruins the educational atmosphere, and overall experience at this school. Hope it can be dealt with soon.” 

According to the previously stated survey with many different GWHS students, 33.3% of students have heard of 3-4 physical altercations, while another 12.8% have heard of 6 or more fights that have occurred on campus this year. A student mentioned during an interview “I've heard of more and more fights which often causes me to walk in the halls with fear.”

GWHS tends to usually have 2 security guards in the hallways of every floor during passing periods and as well as class time, with also always having a security personal guarding the main entrance of the school.

I was fortunately able to get in contact with a GWHS staff member who tends to believe many issues happen with the cause being social media. The staff member explained to me, “many things are said online which tend to get turned into rumors or lies.” This quote allows us to see that staff members at GWHS can also notice the issues going on around the campus.

On a different note, one very big school based event that unfortunately happened to involve a physical altercation was a girls basketball game which was named The Battle of the birds, which is when GWHS girls basketball team went up against Lowell’s high school team at Kezar Pavillion on Jan.24. During the games half time performance a physical altercation happened between a couple of female students. Which was later revealed the altercation began from an argument that began on social media.

During the game at half time there were many different performances from each school. Unfortunately the altercation happened during the performance of the GWHS dance team that they spent a ton of time on and were very dedicated to being able to perform their best at this game for their school. I was able to speak to one of the female students who was performing during the battle of the birds when the altercation occurred.

The student noted, “we all felt very disrespected when everyone paid attention to the fight and ignored the dance we spent very hard on.” As the dance team was instructed to keep performing even though an altercation began right in the middle of thier performance and many other spectating students ran through the court with a phone in thier hand trying to get an angle to record the altercation.

The next steps to be able to help students feel secure on campus should include an increase of security guards. As when we asked for student feedback for how they would feel safer they said,“Better trained security who are active in dismantling physical altercations or fights.” aswell as “A trained faculty member or security personnel must be available to guard any unlocked or open entrance to campuses at any point before, during, and after the school day while students remain on campus.” Another student also mentioned “Most of the fights I see happen outside or in the hallways. Checking those areas more often would be helpful.” These three quotes go to show that many students would feel safer if GWHS has an increase of security personnel on campus.

Aswell as students tend to believe the school should have a higher punishments for students who tend not to follow implemented rules on campus as one student said, “actually punish people that do harm instead of letting them get away with it like always and give them actual punishments, not 1 day of suspension that they'll treat as a day off.”

While also possibly researching adding programs on campus to help students with any fears or anxieties of being on campus. According to an article by the Learning Policy institute they say that mental health support is one of the biggest ways for students to feel safe on campus.The article also mentions of other schools adding School resource officers (SROs) to schools campuses which are school officers who have arresting powers that remain around school in case of any conflicts.