Fights: Conquering the Problem

A look into why people fight, it’s impact and the best way to tackle the problem

You know, even I enjoy a little skirmish here and there, but this is just ridiculous.

Over the years, Wakefield High School’s faculty has been engaged in a fierce engagement with those who get into fights. Our hour long SMART lunch has been threatened a multitude of times in the past and just this year those threats became reality.

As a student who has never thrown a punch at a person without having a layer of foam around his fist I believe I speak for most people when saying that it’s frustrating that the most burdensome developments in our school have been related to fighting.

Fights aren’t unique to our school either. Fights are something most public school have to deal with. The NCES (National Center for Education Statistics) reported that in 2014 there were less than half a million cases of nonfatal violent confrontations directly at schools. The CDC (Center for Disease Control) claims that fights are commonly related to lower socio-economic equality and poverty. On a deeper scientific level, fights are a direct reflection of extreme negative emotions. In a conference hosted by the University of Utah, students and faculty explored how the process of human evolution has driven human aggression. Many concluded the major factor seemed to be connected directly to emotion or rather the development of emotions. From the evidence, we can conclude that fights and other such violent expressions are commonly outbursts of stress caused by both unstable living conditions and increasingly oppressive pressures of life.

Teenagers are hormonal, we’re going through complicated times of identity and planning all while growing up. We more often than not find ourselves in times of stress, that’s inevitable, so when we’re pressured by others that stress can come spiraling out. We know that too, fights come from anger and stress, obviously. However, we’ve failed recognizing this and using it to take an extra step forward to actually solve, and that’s due to dehumanization. When something negatively impacts us, in this case fighting, people as a whole scorn those at blame. In the process, emotions, conditions, and any concern whatsoever is lost.

Sure, any active school with violent engagements should strive to lower its amount of conflict but policy isn’t the best way to fix this. In all honesty, policy has proven to have its holes; it causes social unrest and rebellious behavior and we see this at our own Wakefield High. After this new policy was instilled, fights still occurred, almost as much as we had prior. I myself have heard of and experienced such events just outside the auditorium. The best way to tackle this problem is to attack it from the roots. Creating a better community for those in need is the best way we can stop violence. As indirect as it seems, community service and charity can raise the living standards of others and in turn lower the amount of violence.

This won’t erase conflict, as violence persists as long as there’s more than one person in the world, but it will lower it substantially. Change won’t come from forcible policy, but rather kindness and understanding.