a1489: School in U.S.

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: CLaBas1@aol.com


Asbury Park Students Warned:  No Fighting

(Asbury Park Press, March 9, 2002, by Nancy Shields)

Asbury Park Superintendent of Schools Antonio Lewis told students at Asbury Park High School yesterday that enough is enough, black and Haitian students should come together, and there will be zero tolerance for fights at the school.
"I don't know how you feel when you find out your friends and classmates are running rampant through the building, fighting and disrespecting others," Lewis said during four morning assemblies with the school's 560 students.  "We know the number of students who took part yesterday are just a handful, but that handful is just a nightmare."
Serious offenders among the 11 students school administrators say took part in a Thursday morning fight will not be allowed to return to school.  Lewis said he will begin reviewing each case Monday and make recommendations for expulsion to the Board of Education.
Bad feelings between black and Haitian students have existed for years but have been particularly acute this school year.  Thursday’s fight came after an incident during the weekend when Haitian students went to a party and were told by black students they weren’t welcome.
Many students who spoke at the assemblies yesterday welcomed the zero-tolerance stance, and some asked why students had not been kicked out earlier.  Lewis said the students had to be given a certain due process.
“Up until yesterday, the things experienced never escalated to the level it did yesterday,” he said.  “It’s time to put an end to this.”
Police on Thursday charged four boys, ages 16 and 17, with simple assault, disorderly conduct and rioting.  A fifth boy, a 15-year-old, faces a complaint filed by a 16-year-old who said he had a chair thrown at him and had to get 10 stitches over an eye.
“These boys should have been out of here,” said sophomore Raven Altson, 16.  “I want to go to college, but I can’t do it when classes have been stopped.”
Students asked Lewis to make the building more secure, and he said he would.  He asked the students to alert teachers or administrators if a problem was brewing so that the school can “act rather than react.”
Some students said they’re worried that despite the students being out of school, they will still run into them on the street.  Community leaders have said the town must come together to address the bad blood and find a way to unite.
The district tried, holding two forums on Haitian-black relations in recent months.
Rudolph Pierre, chairman of the city’s Housing Authority, said he and his brother found themselves fighting black students almost the minute they came from Haiti as young children in 1965.
“We had to fight our way to acceptance because we spoke a different language,” he said.  “Our culture was different.”
“It comes from the parents on both sides,” Pierre added.  “African American parents are saying don’t mingle with Haitian Americans because they think they’re better than you, and Haitian American parents are saying don’t mingle with African Americans because they’re a negative influence.  Both are lies.”
Lewis told the students his own story of facing prejudice when his parents in Central America sent him as a young child to live with seven aunts in Brooklyn.
He was teased and picked on and feared running into other children.  The reason he was not liked, he said, was because he could speak Spanish very well.
In second grade, he stood up to a group of six boys who were trying to rob him on the way to the store and learned “that in order for people to accept you, you have to be bad, tough and take no nonsense from anyone.”
It was the wrong lesson, he told the students.
>From second through 10th grade, he ran with a street gang, and in fact was the leader from sixth grade on.  It was not until a high school physical education teacher took enough interest in him to first stand up to him physically and then encourage his interest in learning that his life turned around.
He got basketball scholarships to colleges and graduated from East Stroudsburg University.  Lewis told the students how happy he is to be one of eight school superintendents of color in a state with more than 600 districts, and one of 250 superintendents of color out of 15,000 in the country.
“When people ask me what I am, I refer to myself as a Latin-Afro-American,” he said.