
{"id":1720,"date":"2008-01-24T07:14:48","date_gmt":"2008-01-24T15:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2008\/01\/24\/fight-has-high-school-looking-for-answers\/"},"modified":"2008-01-24T07:14:48","modified_gmt":"2008-01-24T15:14:48","slug":"fight-has-high-school-looking-for-answers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2008\/01\/24\/fight-has-high-school-looking-for-answers\/","title":{"rendered":"Fight has high school looking for answers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>By Susan Dickson<\/strong><br \/>\nStaff Writer<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Students and teachers were left saddened and bewildered after racially-charged comments led to a fight among three students at Carrboro High School last Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>According to Principal Jeff Thomas, the fight broke out after a white student made racially charged comments to a black student. After faculty members broke up the fight, one of the students had to be taken to the hospital for injuries and was released later that evening.<br \/>\nAccording to a police report, the fight involved three offenders, including a 16-year-old black student, a 17-year old white student and a 15-year old black student. According to the report, two of the students fought while the third student struck one of the other students repeatedly.<br \/>\nThe students have not yet been charged, according to Carrboro Police Captain J.G. Booker.<\/p>\n<p>Possible charges include assault as well as ethnic intimidation.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We certainly don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sanction any hatred language, any ethnic intimidation, and we certainly don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sanction violence in response to that language,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Thomas said.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153[The fight] has given people in the community the perception that we have a race relation issue,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he added. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I would say, yes we do. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know any high schools that don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have race relation issues.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>According to Thomas, the incident may have been related to a previous incident in December, in which the white student involved in the fight used a racial slur toward a black student, who was not involved in Thursday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fight.<\/p>\n<p>The school then enlisted the help of the Dispute Settlement Center to resolve the issues between the black student and the white student.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153There is a large group of African-American students who are pretty angry with this student,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Thomas said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That in large part is what really motivated the fight last week.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Thomas said many of the students at the school don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand why the fight happened.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a feeling of sadness [among the students],\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Thomas said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A group came to me after school Thursday wanting to talk.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Their statements to me were, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWe don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 Why is this happening in our school? We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re all friends.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Thomas said the school has brought in additional security and counselors since the fight. In addition, the school is forming a committee of students, staff and parents to create a plan to deal with race issues at the school.<\/p>\n<p>Disciplinary action against the students is pending, Thomas said.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Racial conflict is obviously not something that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s occurred overnight, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not going to go away overnight,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Thomas said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We have an opportunity here to make a tremendous difference in our students\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 race relations.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153These issues are at all high schools, and they probably don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get talked about enough.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Susan Dickson Staff Writer Students and teachers were left saddened and bewildered after racially-charged comments led to a fight among three students at Carrboro High School last Thursday. According to Principal Jeff Thomas, the fight broke out after a white student made racially charged comments to a black student. After faculty members broke up&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}