Senior Brenna Morley discusses the altercation with Senior Delany Evens, which caught attention.
November 11, 2019
Pleasant Valley High School saw a fight involving multiple students last Wednesday that led to a series of drastic responses from both the students and staff.
From an outside perspective: a fight is a simple matter, and nothing uncommon. Though in the past PV has had occasional altercations, the fight that occurred was the first of its kind in recent time. Students and staff reacted to this fight as if it were a monumental moment. While there are important issues surrounding the fight and the build up to it, the severity of the event was blown out of proportion.
High school fights are very common throughout the nation in other schools. Within the past week, Davenport West High School had a fight between two students that ended with one in the hospital and the other facing criminal charges.
Across the Mississippi at United Township High School (UT) graduate Ian Solis recalled frequent fights during his tenure at UT. “It was very sporadic. Sometimes we would go a few weeks without a fight and then have three in a day,” Solis said.
Because of its common occurrence, Solis and his peers were used to this type of behavior. “None of the fights were talked about. Sometimes you would hear about them the period after or depending on who was on the fight,” he said.
On the other hand, after the fight at PV, students have been solely focused on the subject for several days. “I have heard someone talking about the fight almost every period since it happened. It has kind of gotten ridiculous,” Senior Jacob Holland said.
Students have not been the only ones discussing the fight after the fact. The school sent out a mass email to all parents of PV students addressing the underlying issues behind the fight as well as releasing the same statement to KWQC. The fight was also a prevalent topic of discussion among teachers and staff at in-services for the early out on the day of the fight.
If PV wanted to take away attention from the fight to diffuse the situation, they should have simply moved on rather than rushing to blame social media.
It is necessary for the school to peacefully resolve issues like this one. However, the excessive response from both PV students and staff has made it difficult to move past an event that typically does not disrupt the productivity of students for days following the incident in other school districts.
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