Hallway Behavior and Howard's Response
Bobby Smith '22 Staff Writer
Kamryn Tinsley '25 Staff Writer
Kamryn Tinsley '25 Staff Writer
It was Monday, October 18, 2021. The morning announcements came on, and from the speakers came the voice of Mr. Novak, the principal of Howard High. He had come on to Howard 360 4 times to address the unruly behavior of some students, condemning it, and saying that behavior such as fighting, inappropriate language, bullying of any sort and disrespect in general is not what Howard is meant to represent. For this morning’s announcement, Mr. Novak said the same thing, this time also having teachers give a presentation with a reminder of the rules. With Mr. Novak’s multiple announcements coupled with gossip and rumors about fighting, racist posts on social media and a chaotic SGA meeting trying to address the situation, students at Howard are probably wondering what exactly was going on and how we got to this point in the first place.
It all began with a resurfaced video of a student, who was age twelve at the time, who currently still goes to Howard. In the video she said a racial slur. Considering that the student has many friends who are people of color, it caused commotion. Shortly after that, fights broke out in the hallways. Students recorded these fights and shared them with their friends on social media. Though these fights were unrelated to the post, students didn’t know what was going on and rumors began to spread, making some think that the two were somehow related. The school tried to address the situation regarding the fights and the racist post in a proper manner by putting in effort to make a Town Hall meeting for students so they could voice their concerns regarding the situation. However, the meeting was overcrowded and not everybody got to ask questions or voice their opinions. Because of this, the staff at Howard decided to allow people to write their concerns onto notecards and give them to Howard staff so that they could be addressed. However, these notecards have seemingly vanished and have yet to be addressed. Around the same time, a Tik Tok trend known as the “Devious Lick Challenge” was trending, and this “challenge” was to record yourself vandalizing or stealing items from places like bathrooms and post it to Tik Tok. While this trend wasn’t as extreme at Howard as it was at other schools, it still put people on edge. It was then that, on September 24th, 2021, Mr. Novak had to come onto the Howard 360 to make his first announcement out of four in total regarding the unruly behavior.
When asked about the kind of behavior he addressed in his announcements, Mr. Novak said that the behavior included fighting, students cursing and saying derogatory things in the hallways, running and having to be reminded to pull their masks up. He stated, “Over time, you start to realize people are done with the warnings, you know? We can only warn so much and then we sound like a broken record. It’s like people know ‘Hey, this is what the expectations are, this is what we're supposed to do,’ but they just don’t want to do it. So therefore there’s gonna need to be consequences.” He did, however, acknowledge that most students at Howard were not behaving this way. When asked if he thought there was one event that led to another or if these were just random events, he responded, “I think a lot of it is different stuff. There’s upwards of 1800 students that go here, so there’s a lot of different issues that people are dealing with on a daily basis.” He said that it was common for more than one person to get drawn into an issue and that it’s likely that students who aren’t used to in-person learning haven’t had to deal with stressful situations in person and aren’t adjusted to face to face interactions after a year of education behind a screen, suggesting that this might be the reason behind such unruly behavior.
When asked if she thought the administration at Howard handled the situation properly, SGA member Emma Brown stated that, “It was a tough situation, there were definitely some gaps,” but, “The administration did their best by giving announcements and addressing the situation.” She said that since students were coming back from fully virtual learning, it was a completely different social experience. She stated that slurs were often used in the vocabulary of some students, citing the r-word as one she heard often. She referred to it as “normalized hatred.” When asked how much context students had to the actual behavior and the announcements made to address them, Brown stated that students who use Snapchat and Instagram had seen videos of the fights, so they had an idea of what was going on. However, she also said that, “A lot of people were left in the dark, and that leads to the spreading of rumors.”
Howard plans on addressing these situations a little more sternly than just addressing and condemning them on the morning announcements for those who continue to engage in this behavior. Howard does not condone the racist behavior and will listen to their students’ opinions so that everyone is heard. Howard plans on handing out the proper punishments to limit this inappropriate behavior, including Friday school and in and out of school suspension.
It all began with a resurfaced video of a student, who was age twelve at the time, who currently still goes to Howard. In the video she said a racial slur. Considering that the student has many friends who are people of color, it caused commotion. Shortly after that, fights broke out in the hallways. Students recorded these fights and shared them with their friends on social media. Though these fights were unrelated to the post, students didn’t know what was going on and rumors began to spread, making some think that the two were somehow related. The school tried to address the situation regarding the fights and the racist post in a proper manner by putting in effort to make a Town Hall meeting for students so they could voice their concerns regarding the situation. However, the meeting was overcrowded and not everybody got to ask questions or voice their opinions. Because of this, the staff at Howard decided to allow people to write their concerns onto notecards and give them to Howard staff so that they could be addressed. However, these notecards have seemingly vanished and have yet to be addressed. Around the same time, a Tik Tok trend known as the “Devious Lick Challenge” was trending, and this “challenge” was to record yourself vandalizing or stealing items from places like bathrooms and post it to Tik Tok. While this trend wasn’t as extreme at Howard as it was at other schools, it still put people on edge. It was then that, on September 24th, 2021, Mr. Novak had to come onto the Howard 360 to make his first announcement out of four in total regarding the unruly behavior.
When asked about the kind of behavior he addressed in his announcements, Mr. Novak said that the behavior included fighting, students cursing and saying derogatory things in the hallways, running and having to be reminded to pull their masks up. He stated, “Over time, you start to realize people are done with the warnings, you know? We can only warn so much and then we sound like a broken record. It’s like people know ‘Hey, this is what the expectations are, this is what we're supposed to do,’ but they just don’t want to do it. So therefore there’s gonna need to be consequences.” He did, however, acknowledge that most students at Howard were not behaving this way. When asked if he thought there was one event that led to another or if these were just random events, he responded, “I think a lot of it is different stuff. There’s upwards of 1800 students that go here, so there’s a lot of different issues that people are dealing with on a daily basis.” He said that it was common for more than one person to get drawn into an issue and that it’s likely that students who aren’t used to in-person learning haven’t had to deal with stressful situations in person and aren’t adjusted to face to face interactions after a year of education behind a screen, suggesting that this might be the reason behind such unruly behavior.
When asked if she thought the administration at Howard handled the situation properly, SGA member Emma Brown stated that, “It was a tough situation, there were definitely some gaps,” but, “The administration did their best by giving announcements and addressing the situation.” She said that since students were coming back from fully virtual learning, it was a completely different social experience. She stated that slurs were often used in the vocabulary of some students, citing the r-word as one she heard often. She referred to it as “normalized hatred.” When asked how much context students had to the actual behavior and the announcements made to address them, Brown stated that students who use Snapchat and Instagram had seen videos of the fights, so they had an idea of what was going on. However, she also said that, “A lot of people were left in the dark, and that leads to the spreading of rumors.”
Howard plans on addressing these situations a little more sternly than just addressing and condemning them on the morning announcements for those who continue to engage in this behavior. Howard does not condone the racist behavior and will listen to their students’ opinions so that everyone is heard. Howard plans on handing out the proper punishments to limit this inappropriate behavior, including Friday school and in and out of school suspension.