By Jack Ryan
News Editor
A 14 year old girl got pulled to the ground, banged against lockers, hair torn apart, and beaten up in front of everybody at Woodrow Wilson high school in Washington D.C. on Feb. 10, 2015. Teachers walked around the fight while the 14 year old girl was getting beaten up by two other girls, and simply did nothing about it. To viewers it was just another fight in the high school realm.
As everybody knows fights do happen at Prospect, and unlike many other high schools they do not go unnoticed by the security guards or the deans.
When a fight occurs like this past Monday on March 16, the security guards do not just let it happen like at Woodrow Wilson high school.
They respond to the fight right away by screaming the students names very loud hoping that it will then stop. If that does not work, then they will intervene and make sure they do not get hit by trying to force the kids to stop fighting. Not only do they have to worry about getting hit, they also try and discourage other students from joining in on the fight.
Dean of students Mark Taylor and the rest of the security try and prevent fights as much as possible by talking to other students before the fight and hearing from them what might be fight might be brewing.
Taylor says there are periods where fights happen the most at Prospect right before winter and spring break, and then right before the school year ends due to it be a more stressful time for the students with school.
He does understand that it is not just the time that causes a fight, but other reasons as well like students spreading rumors about each other, breaking up with a girlfriend, and family struggles as well.
“[Fights that happen are] combined with other personal things that are going on in their lives that are stressful and it comes out in different ways,” Taylor said.
Unlike Woodrow Wilson high school where the teachers kept walking past the fight, Prospect takes a stand against fights and listens to students about what is going on with their peers and in social media.
“Listening to groups of kids [is the key to preventing fights], and our security knows a lot of kids, and I know a lot of kids,” Taylor said. “Kids are probably the best prevention of the fights because your peers know what’s going to be happening.”