Black students share how failing school safety measures lead to escalating violence and victimization.

When “Jerome,” a 10th-grade student in a suburban school district, walked out the school door to find his ride home, he noticed a large group of boys waiting outside. Because of a previous altercation in which a bully punched him, took his shoes, and threatened to jump him the following day, Jerome was convinced that the group of boys was waiting for him.

“It was the day after I got jumped on,” Jerome said. “School got out [at] around 3 and we [Jerome and his cousin] see a gang of people just looking at us [as] soon as we walk out of the building. And then we [were] like, ‘Those are probably the ones that was gonna jump on us.’ And we was right, ’cause they were staring at us the whole time.”

To protect himself, Jerome called another cousin who came to the school with a large group of boys. This led to a massive brawl outside the high school.

Jerome’s experience is one of dozens that I document in my book, Suspended: Punishment, Violence, and the Failure of School Safety. The book is part of my ongoing research about how Black families and teachers view punishment, violence, and safety in K-12 schools. In Suspended, I interviewed 110 Black students and parents from urban and suburban high schools throughout Michigan. Each student had received at least one out-of-school suspension. I also interviewed 50 high school teachers who were threatened or attacked by students. I used pseudonyms to protect their confidentiality.

As millions of students have transitioned from virtual to in-person learning, school officials have documented an increase in fights and school shootings (Irwin et al., 2022). The Institute of Education Sciences’ (IES) 2021 Report on Indicators of School Crime and Safety states there were 93 school shootings with casualties in public and private schools in the 2020-21 school year — the highest number since 2000-01 (Irwin et al., 2022). The report also reveals that the percentage of schools documenting instances of cyberbullying and verbal abuse of teachers doubled over the last decade. Data I obtained using the Michigan Freedom of Information Act show school officials in the districts I studied issued approximately one-third of all suspensions for violent offenses, which included physical assault of a student, threats of violence, intimidation, and verbal abuse.

These findings have implications for the safety and well-being of millions of children in schools throughout the U.S. Although IES data (Irwin et al., 2022) show that more than 90% of schools regulate access to buildings and use other forms of security, such as cameras (91%) and security staff (65%), students in my study overwhelmingly expressed that they did not feel safe.

School safety measures don’t offer protection

Some of the students said they did not want to fight anyone, but they perceived that school officials and safety measures did not protect them when other students initiated attacks.

For example, at the time of the fight at Jerome’s high school, the school had a liaison program with the police department. Despite their presence on school grounds, local law enforcement did not prevent this altercation. Following the massive brawl, school officials suspended Jerome for 10 days and advised him to transfer schools because they could not protect him. Jerome said the school administrators were “basically telling me not to come back ’cause it might not be safe for me.”

Students said they did not want to fight anyone, but they perceived that school officials and safety measures did not protect them when other students initiated attacks.

Fears for their safety lead some students not to leave, but to fight. Tracey, a 10th-grade student in an urban school district, told me she has received approximately 30 suspensions, and many were for fighting. As her initial nonchalant attitude subsided, I learned that she was hiding an intense fear of being harmed because of the inadequate safety measures at her school. In our interview, Tracey stated:

As soon as you walk in, the metal detectors aren’t on, and then when [school guards] check your bag they just move the stuff, they don’t really check it. I have like 10 zippers on my bag that open, and they only check that one, that one big [zipper]. I could probably hide stuff in it, and they wouldn’t notice. When there’s a fight, [security guards] don’t move fast enough. When there is a problem going on, they’re never actually there. Like if there’s a fight, either students break it up or another teacher that’s walking past. The security guard should be on it [but] they don’t run, they walk to the fight, and they just don’t pay attention.

Consequently, Tracey believes she must always display toughness “because if you don’t, I feel like [other students] are just going to bully you and push you around.”

Fighting to enhance their reputations

Given their perceptions that school safety measures would not protect them, several students saw no option but to fight back when attacked at school. Specifically, they told me if they backed down from a fight, their peers would view them as weak. They believed that showing fear and an unwillingness to defend themselves would result in more attacks. But using violence to defend themselves led to suspensions and more attacks, putting them in a lose-lose situation. This was not much of a deterrence to students who told me that fighting earned them popularity, respect, and a reputation for toughness. Jerome, for example, told me that when he returned to school after being suspended for fighting “everybody was giving us respect.”

Eric, a 9th grader in an urban school district, described a fight he engaged in with another student. After a classmate accused him of stealing and pushed him, Eric retaliated by punching the student. Eric’s reaction escalated the altercation, which led to a fistfight and earned him a three-day suspension. When I asked him how fighting and receiving a suspension influenced his social status, he stated:

I don’t think it makes anybody popular, but it gives you some type of respect or somethin’. Like, let’s say you beat the kid up, like nobody’s gonna really try to mess with you ’cause you just beat the kid up.

Social alliances and escalating violence

Steven, a 10th-grade student in a suburban high school shared this story:

I had got into an altercation, and I was about to get jumped [by] about 10 [kids]. It was boys and girls. When I came out of my class they was waiting, and they tried to surround me. My friends had to come help me.

During this frightening experience, school officials and guards did not intervene. Jerome, Steven, and several other students had learned from their experiences that they cannot rely on school safety measures to protect them. As a result, they established alliances with other students who are willing to fight to ensure group safety.

When I asked Steven how fighting influenced his social status, he replied: “I feel like a lot of people respect me more for fighting, but it also puts a target on my back because the people I argue with and fight with, their friends jump in.” Steven and several other students expressed that fighting deters some confrontations and invites others.

The students agreed that the absence of reliable safety measures in school required them to fight continuously to earn a reputation that deterred fights and maintained high popularity and respect. Although I expected the students to have between one and five suspensions, most of the students I interviewed had received between 10 and 30 suspensions by the time they reached 9th grade.

Acknowledging the ‘code of the school’

Collectively, the students I interviewed suggested that a set of informal social norms regulate the use of violence in schools — particularly when school safety measures fail to provide a safe learning environment. The informal social norms, which I refer to as the “code of the school,” dictate when it is appropriate to use violence (Bell, 2019, 2021). Abiding by the code of the school also provides social status rewards — mainly popularity, respect, and perceived toughness — to students willing to use physical violence to protect themselves and their peers.

Abiding by the code of the school also provides social status rewards — mainly popularity, respect, and perceived toughness — to students willing to use physical violence to protect themselves and their peers.

In the absence of reliable safety measures, the code transforms school suspension into a way students can demonstrate their ability to fight, and this willingness to fight despite the risk of suspension undermines school authority and potentially operates as a pathway to prison for vulnerable students (Bell, Kinzel, & Akakpo, 2022). Because fighting in school is increasingly criminalized, students may be arrested and incarcerated for defending themselves from violent assaults.

Although physical violence is associated with urban schools, appearances of this code remained intact and relatively consistent throughout inner-city and suburban primarily Black high schools and suburban primarily white high schools. Thus, the racial and social class makeup of the school body had little effect on the informal norms that regulate violence in schools.

Fear of being harmed

My research reveals that students follow the informal rules outlined in the code of the school because they possess a keen awareness of their vulnerability to harm. Students reported seeing peers and adults using unprotected rear or side entrances to enter the school with weapons and to sneak drugs into the school. Angel, a 9th-grade student, shared one example of the violence she witnessed at her school:

A teacher was swinging [punching] on some students, and last week their parents came up here with a gun. We was on lockdown and I didn’t feel safe, so I called my mom to come pick me up, immediately. Like, “You gotta come get me,” ’cause I was like “I’m sick of this school.”

Students feel obliged to abide by the code not because they are violent but because they see it as the most effective way to avoid victimization. Although some of the students initially appeared aggressive or apathetic, I discovered through my interviews that they were fearful of being victimized at school. They seemed to be engaging in a defense mechanism known as reaction formation. Psychologists describe reaction formation as changing a socially undesired impulse to its opposite (Baumeister, Dale, & Sommer, 1998). Students were aware that exhibiting fear would lead their peers to view them as weak. Therefore, they chose to display toughness and aggression as a defense mechanism to deter altercations.

Students were aware that exhibiting fear would lead their peers to view them as weak. Therefore, they chose to display toughness and aggression as a defense mechanism to deter altercations.

As students navigate the school setting, the importance of protecting themselves cannot be understated. News articles have documented several instances in which students sustained severe injuries or died following school fights. For example, on Sept. 16, 2019, two students at Landmark Middle School in Moreno Valley, California, attacked a boy named Diego Stolz (ABC7 News, 2019). A social media video shows two teenagers punching Diego before his head hits a concrete pillar. Tragically, Diego died. Several other students, such as Joevon Patterson-Smith, Raniya Wright, Danyna Gibson, Kashala Francis, Amy Joyner-Francis, and Lorel Malone also suffered untimely deaths related to school fights (Baca & Ford, 2018; Fieldstadt, 2019; Hall, 2018; Hutchinson, 2019; Lehman, 2016; Thies, 2015).

Reimagining school safety

Several students in Suspended suggest that deficiencies in school safety create an unsafe environment, contribute to fighting in school, and potentially increase school violence. While some students call for more metal detectors and guards, a growing national movement of students has criticized the presence of law enforcement and prison-like security measures in public schools (Advancement Project, 2021; Henderson, 2020). As school boards continue to approve millions of dollars in spending on programs that bring police into schools, educators and others have asked whether the money would be better spent on mental health practitioners, such as social workers and psychologists (Leone & Greene, 2020; Swartz & Cullotta, 2021).

Many of the students I interviewed felt they had no one to talk to about the challenges they experienced with bullying and school-based victimization. The escalation of violence these students describe is just one of the potentially tragic outcomes when students are left to fend for themselves, without protection and support from adults. In the cases of Seven Bridges, Izzy Tichenor, and McKenzie Adams, persistent bullying led to their deaths by suicide (Fountaine & Hayden, 2022; Joseph, 2021; Taylor, 2018). The increase in school fights and the potential for grave outcomes demand that parents, students, researchers, school officials, and policy makers work together to create new interventions that reduce violence in schools. The lives of children in American public schools depend on us.

References

ABC7 Staff. (2019, October 29). Family of boy killed in SoCal school fight files wrongful death claim against school district. ABC 30 Action News.

Advancement Project. (2021, May 22). Featured organizer: Indigo of Black organizing project in Oakland California. Author.

Baca, N. & Ford, S. (2018, January 30). Student with special needs dies after family says he was ambushed, kicked in head. ABC 7 News.

Baumeister, R.F., Dale, K., & Sommer, K.L. (1998). Freudian defense mechanisms and empirical findings in modern social psychology: Reaction formation, projection, displacement, undoing, isolation, sublimation, and denial. Journal of Personality, 66 (6), 1081-1124.

Bell, C. (2019). The code of the school: Discipline, respect, and survival in primarily Black high schools. Journal of Crime and Justice, 42 (4), 414-429.

Bell, C. (2021). Suspended: Punishment, violence, and the failure of school safety. JHU Press.

Bell, C., Kinzel, A., & Akakpo, Y. (2022). Continuity of the “code”: A review of the subcultures and informal social norms in prisons, streets, and schools. Sociology Compass, 16 (8).

Fieldstadt, E. (2019, April 8). Mom of fifth grader Raniya Wright who died after fight said she told school of bullying. NBC News.

Fountaine, H. & Hayden, C. (2022, January 19). Louisville boy’s death by suicide sparks change at JCPS and beyond. WHAS 11.

Hall, C. (2018, September 12). Cops: Dispute about boy may have led to fatal stabbing at Warren school. Detroit Free Press.

Henderson, T. (2020, August 7). Young people are leading the growing movement for police-free schools. Truthout.

Hutchinson, B. (2019, April 24). 13-year-old Houston girl dies after being jumped by classmates while walking home from school. ABC News.

Irwin, V., Wang, K., Cui, J., & Thompson, A. (2022). Report on indicators of school crime and safety: 2021 (NCES 2022-092/NCJ 304625). National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences.

Joseph, E. (2021, November 13). 10-year-old Utah Black and autistic student dies by suicide weeks after scathing DOJ report on school district. CNN.

Lehman, T. (2016, April 21). Classmates hold vigil for student fatally wounded in attack at Howard High School. WDEL.

Leone, H. & Greene, M. (2020, June 5). Police killing of George Floyd amplifies calls to remove school resource officers from Chicago public schools: ‘We don’t need more cops.’ Chicago Tribune.

Swartz, T. & Cullota, K. (2021, September 22). Despite reduction of cops in Chicago school, Board of Ed votes to pay $11 million to Police Department for resource officers. Chicago Tribune.

Taylor, S. (2018, December 8). Linden family mourns 9-year-old who took her own life. Tuscaloosa News.

Thies, C. (2015, November 12). Lawsuit: Bullying over Christian beliefs led to death of Lorel Malone. WLOX.

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This article appears in the December 2022/January 2023 issue of Kappan, Vol. 104, No. 4, pp. 12-17.