Be true to your school
Oct. 16th, 2007 03:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beatriceeagleGet ready, because this is going to be a long post. I've had an interesting day -- in many ways -- and it bears writing out.
So, everyone on my flist has been to high school, right? Think back (or, if you're still there, consider). How divided was your school? How much did you separate into cliques, and how were they defined? Did people generally like each other, or not?
I ask because of what happened at my school today.
Okay. So, my school district is generally thought of by other schools in the area as a "rich kids' school district." There are a lot of reasons for that. It spends a lot of money per kid, we have good supplies, we have a lot of extracurricular educational opportunities. Plus, you know, a significant portion of the student body (myself included) is rich, or at least upper middle class.
On the other hand, the district draws from six municipalities. Two are wealthy. Two are middle class. Two are (generally) much poorer. As you might imagine, divisions can run high, but the school doesn't really advertise that.
On Friday, the day of the homecoming game, we had a generic wear-your-school-colors spirit day. But a group of kids, almost exclusively from the wealthy municipalities, unofficially declared it "Fresh Friday," with the idea that they'd dress up like Fresh Prince of Bel-Aire and make fun of the 90s. It didn't quite work out that way.
Instead, a lot of the costumes ended up looking very similar to the kinds of clothes that a lot of kids from the poorer municipalities wear. Some of that was coincidence, I think; a significant part wasn't. In the hallways (I didn't witness this part, although several people I know did), the n-word was thrown around to some extent, people imitated the speech patterns of the people they were dressed as, and some people said things like, "I look like a rat today."
"Rat" is my school's derogatory term for people from the poorer municipalities.
This morning, the junior class was called to a meeting in the auditorium. Several people, from student council and from the general student population, stood at the front of the auditorium and explained, into a microphone, why they were offended. And they got some support from us, but mostly, they faced a lot of viciousness from the people who raised their hands to respond. I have, for the people who stood up there, more respect than I can remember having for almost anyone else. Tomorrow, the whole thing will be repeated with the senior class.
Today, I heard a lot of people who dressed up claiming that the whole thing was blown out of proportion, and that some of the claims, (like the imitation of speech) were made up. I'd be a lot more inclined to believe that if the same thing hadn't happened before.
When I was a freshman, a group of students came into school on Halloween dressed up as kids from the poorer municipalities; there wasn't even a pretense that time. Several of those students were on student council. One of them was the student body president. It came to be known as "Rat Day." Because of that incident, the administration rearranged student council so that students from all municipalities are included. But they didn't say anything about it to any of the students. They never even admitted that was why they rearranged it. Until today.
Other things I heard today:
"They're trying to tell us we can't wear certain clothes."
"This is reinforcing a stereotype."
"We were dressing up to appreciate that style!"
I say bullshit to all of them. No one told them they couldn't wear certain clothes; they told them not to be assholes. It's not reinforcing a stereotype to take offense to a stereotype that someone else presents. And it's not "appreciative" when the word rat gets thrown into the mix. Bullshit. They know they screwed up, and they don't want to be wrong.
(On the other hand, I had about five very serious conversations on this same subject with people I consider friends today. Not everyone in my school is an asshole.)
Now, I don't believe that all of the kids who dressed up went around calling people rats or imitating speech, and I don't even believe that all of them realized that other people weren't dressing up as Fresh Prince. But the ones who knew what they were really dressing up as, even if they didn't do it to make fun of people (which is hard to believe), are idiots. Absolute idiots.
And you know, it's not just the school. It's this entire community. Just this morning, I heard one of my friends talking about how her mother is afraid to let her hang out in one of the poorer communities (which really isn't dangerous, at all). Or with people from that community. It runs the other way as well; I know several parents from those communities who're extremely mistrustful of people from the wealthy areas.
So I want to know whether this is just a socio-economic thing, or whether it has something to do with how divided my school is by cliques and social groups. Some of the social groups split along socio-economic lines. I want to figure out whether this is a problem constricted to money issues, or whether it has a more global root in how we divide ourselves.
And then I want to figure out what to do about it.
So, everyone on my flist has been to high school, right? Think back (or, if you're still there, consider). How divided was your school? How much did you separate into cliques, and how were they defined? Did people generally like each other, or not?
I ask because of what happened at my school today.
Okay. So, my school district is generally thought of by other schools in the area as a "rich kids' school district." There are a lot of reasons for that. It spends a lot of money per kid, we have good supplies, we have a lot of extracurricular educational opportunities. Plus, you know, a significant portion of the student body (myself included) is rich, or at least upper middle class.
On the other hand, the district draws from six municipalities. Two are wealthy. Two are middle class. Two are (generally) much poorer. As you might imagine, divisions can run high, but the school doesn't really advertise that.
On Friday, the day of the homecoming game, we had a generic wear-your-school-colors spirit day. But a group of kids, almost exclusively from the wealthy municipalities, unofficially declared it "Fresh Friday," with the idea that they'd dress up like Fresh Prince of Bel-Aire and make fun of the 90s. It didn't quite work out that way.
Instead, a lot of the costumes ended up looking very similar to the kinds of clothes that a lot of kids from the poorer municipalities wear. Some of that was coincidence, I think; a significant part wasn't. In the hallways (I didn't witness this part, although several people I know did), the n-word was thrown around to some extent, people imitated the speech patterns of the people they were dressed as, and some people said things like, "I look like a rat today."
"Rat" is my school's derogatory term for people from the poorer municipalities.
This morning, the junior class was called to a meeting in the auditorium. Several people, from student council and from the general student population, stood at the front of the auditorium and explained, into a microphone, why they were offended. And they got some support from us, but mostly, they faced a lot of viciousness from the people who raised their hands to respond. I have, for the people who stood up there, more respect than I can remember having for almost anyone else. Tomorrow, the whole thing will be repeated with the senior class.
Today, I heard a lot of people who dressed up claiming that the whole thing was blown out of proportion, and that some of the claims, (like the imitation of speech) were made up. I'd be a lot more inclined to believe that if the same thing hadn't happened before.
When I was a freshman, a group of students came into school on Halloween dressed up as kids from the poorer municipalities; there wasn't even a pretense that time. Several of those students were on student council. One of them was the student body president. It came to be known as "Rat Day." Because of that incident, the administration rearranged student council so that students from all municipalities are included. But they didn't say anything about it to any of the students. They never even admitted that was why they rearranged it. Until today.
Other things I heard today:
"They're trying to tell us we can't wear certain clothes."
"This is reinforcing a stereotype."
"We were dressing up to appreciate that style!"
I say bullshit to all of them. No one told them they couldn't wear certain clothes; they told them not to be assholes. It's not reinforcing a stereotype to take offense to a stereotype that someone else presents. And it's not "appreciative" when the word rat gets thrown into the mix. Bullshit. They know they screwed up, and they don't want to be wrong.
(On the other hand, I had about five very serious conversations on this same subject with people I consider friends today. Not everyone in my school is an asshole.)
Now, I don't believe that all of the kids who dressed up went around calling people rats or imitating speech, and I don't even believe that all of them realized that other people weren't dressing up as Fresh Prince. But the ones who knew what they were really dressing up as, even if they didn't do it to make fun of people (which is hard to believe), are idiots. Absolute idiots.
And you know, it's not just the school. It's this entire community. Just this morning, I heard one of my friends talking about how her mother is afraid to let her hang out in one of the poorer communities (which really isn't dangerous, at all). Or with people from that community. It runs the other way as well; I know several parents from those communities who're extremely mistrustful of people from the wealthy areas.
So I want to know whether this is just a socio-economic thing, or whether it has something to do with how divided my school is by cliques and social groups. Some of the social groups split along socio-economic lines. I want to figure out whether this is a problem constricted to money issues, or whether it has a more global root in how we divide ourselves.
And then I want to figure out what to do about it.
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no subject
Date: 2007-10-16 08:31 pm (UTC)Of course, my school only had about 600-700 people total, and it was probably about 20% lower class, 60% middle class, and 20% upper class, which may have had something to do with that. A good portion of the lower class students in the district went to trade schools (we have about 4 in the area), and a good portion of the upper class kids went to private schools. About half of the lower class kids (and some of the higher class kids as well, actually. Mostly guys in that case.) didn't care about school enough to even bother with trade school, and the other half was made up of kids who planned to go to college and actually tried. Most of the upper class families that held themselves above the lower class families seemed to send their kids to private schools, so most of the upper class kids left at my school didn't seem to care all that much.
It seems like my school ended up dividing along other lines, and it basically broke down as such:
-Gothic/Punky kids
-Kids who were good students and liked to party AKA "Popular kids"
-Kids who were good students and didn't like to party (this group didn't exist in my grade, but did in the grade below me. The result of which is that once I got to know these people, I hung out more with the grade below me than my own).
- Lower class kids who were poor students
- Druggies
- Kids who cared less about school-work, but were middle or upper class
- The kids who didn't fit in anywhere else, and were ostracized
- The kids who didn't fit in anywhere else, but were accepted
The thing was, people didn't really seem to mock or actively look down on the other groups, they just. . . sort of ignored them. The whole "we won't bother you if you don't bother us" thing. And for the most part, you could associate with whichever group you want, and your greatest risk is being ignored. And there were points of overlap: a lot of the average students that were "funny" or good at sports etc. hung out with the good students, sometimes good student party kids partied with druggies, average students, and a few lower class kids, and people had friends from other groups. Those groups were more how the students divided themselves out at lunch, and who they hung out with the most. I was kind of one of those approved outskirters in my own grade because I was a stellar student but didn't party, so I was on friendly terms with all of the good and average students of my grade because I had class with them, and some of the kids who got worse grades through electives. I mean, there was a lot of inter-group drama and mocking of individual people, but nothing like labeling an entire group "rats."
I think it was more that people just gravitated to those who they considered "like" them. As a caveat, there were very few racial minorities at the school (We had, like 6-12 African Americans in the whole school, 3ish Hispanic kids, 4ish Asians, etc.), and I didn't see a lot of racial prejudice, but that may just be because there were so few minorities. And I know there was some definite prejudice against alternative sexual orientations, from hearing kids talk.
I was only there two years (homeschooled for the first two years of highschool), so I was somewhat of an outsider, and it was a pretty small school. From what I gathered, there were definite divisions, but not the animosity between them that seems to exist at your school.
I can't believe they did that. It's pretty awful.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-16 10:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-16 08:35 pm (UTC)I was in the middle of your post and I just sighed. I think the fact that our school population is so divided has a major part in the whole thing, but I don't think that a lot of it is just general resentment from the two classes for each other. I seriously cannot believe that kids would do that, let alone again. I'm ashamed to say that my sister (Maria) was one of the people who organized it the first time. I asked her why she did it, and she didn't even try to be nice or joking about it. she just said something like "They're Rats. They need to dress more appropriately anyways." If you haven't noticed, I really really dislike her.
There's really nothing that can be done about it, in my opinion anyways. The people who did it will just act all victimized (like they did with the Anti Asian Alliance thing,) and they'll get away with it cause "everyone's making such a big deal about it." Fox Chapel is terrible at dealing with stuff like this. And I don't think the actual district is going to make that big of a deal about it. they'll just hold that conference thing, and that'll be the end of it.
I'm sorry to repeat this, but this makes me thrilled that I go to Wesley.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-16 10:46 pm (UTC)Anyway, I know that FC's horrible about dealing with this stuff. I think someone should step in. Because I think that this level of resentment is just kind of ridiculous.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-17 12:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-17 01:39 am (UTC)you should call me some time and we shall converse about the ever-so-great Fox Chapel
no subject
Date: 2007-10-17 01:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-17 02:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-17 03:56 pm (UTC)