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The grainy video begins as two teen-aged boys square off in front of the Tuolumne County Courthouse. Behind them, a school bus rolls down Washington Street blaring its horn. “Sock ‘em!” yells an off-camera voice.
The two teen combatants begin to swing and kick at each other while a crowd of onlookers gathers around them, many pointing camera phones toward the action.
The two boys fall grappling to the stone walkway as onlookers cheer and shout obscene remarks. “Get up and fight like a man, homeboy!” shouts one of the dozen or so witnesses. The boys tumble clumsily into a hedge before one of the teens is struck by several blows to the face. A stream of blood can be seen dribbling down his nose and lips as the 57-second video cuts out abruptly. It’s unclear when the fight took place or why, but the video was uploaded to the popular website YouTube on Sept. 16 and has since been viewed more than 1,160 times. While the occasional teenage fight is nothing new in the complex world of school yard politics, the omnipresence of video phones and an increasingly plugged-in generation of young people have led many of those brawls to be forever enshrined on the World Wide Web. “This is a part of the youth culture now. I hate to say it,” said Cassina High School Principal Jim Roeber. A quick Google video search of local schools and the word “fight” turns up a handful of videos featuring boys and girls duking it out on camera. Further searches reveal at least a dozen YouTube videos that feature young people fighting in area schools and parks, with some posted as recently as November. Roeber said his teachers work hard to prevent fights before they happen, but many scrapes take place off campus and outside of the school’s sphere of influence. He said the school could potentially punish students if they can be identified in the videos, but the incidents are handled on a case-by-case basis. “If it spills onto campus and impacts the school day, then we will take disciplinary action,” he said. Sonora Union High School District, and indeed most districts in the Mother Lode, have policies to prevent cyber bullying, according to district Superintendent Mike McCoy. But instances of recording garden variety school yard tussles between willing students don’t necessarily qualify as bullying. As far as the students who record the fights, there aren’t any rules that specifically prohibit it, but McCoy said the school board is looking into making it a punishable offense. “With new technology, all kinds of new challenges are coming at us that we have to look at,” he said. “It’s a changing world.” There are videos that show area girls beating each other in a school bathroom, of boys fighting at a bus stop and even a video that shows a student headbutted on a local campus. Like most things on YouTube, there is little context to these fight videos. It is impossible to discern from the often shaky footage what started the fights or if the combatants are genuinely at odds or just horsing around. Each video contains comments from people who often leave disparaging remarks, while others give a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” to the scene. Students say they post and watch these videos mostly out of curiosity. “When somebody tells me there’s a cool fight, I look it up and watch it,” said Community Day School sophomore Gabe Hesler, 16. “I’m a teenage boy. I like to watch fights.” He said he has seen several local brawls posted on the web and said he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with the videos. However, as entertaining as it might be, he admits it can be troublesome for some students. “It would be embarrassing to have that up on YouTube forever,” Hesler said while playing hacky sack with friends in Coffill Park on Thursday. Sonora Police Chief Mark Stinson said it is not a crime to simply record a fight. However, if the fight leads to charges against either party, the camera or phone could be seized into evidence. “If it comes into a case that’s reported to us, we will review it and try to identify those involved and witnesses, and maybe contact them,” Stinson said. That’s exactly what happened after a recent fight in Rotary Park turned ugly and resulted in assault charges, Stinson said. “We got wind that somebody recorded a fight on an iPhone, so we seized it as evidence before they could put it up on the web,” he said. Stinson said it is primarily a teen phenomenon and that most of the cases are handled at the school level. “We’re just seeing this with high school kids primarily,” he said. YouTube fight videos have led to arrests elsewhere in the state.Last year, a Ceres mother made headlines when she was arrested after a YouTube video showed her egging on her teenaged son during an altercation with another boy. Jennifer Zuniga, 33, was charged with child endangerment and contributing to the delinquency of a minor after the video showed her inciting the fight. “It is not unique to our high schools,” McCoy said, before adding that he first noticed the phenomenon five or six years ago when he was working at a school in Sacramento. Denny Shaw, chief operations officer for the nonprofit Internet safety organization I-Safe, said posting videos of youths engaged in fisticuffs can be harassment if the intent is to embarrass one or both students. “It’s one thing to lose a fight in front of 10 or 15 boys on the school yard,” he said. “It’s another thing to see it get 1 million hits on YouTube.” A Google search for the words “school fight” turns up millions of videos. Shaw said the prolific nature of these types of videos can ultimately provoke more violent behavior as children become desensitized. “Kids have always been (fighting), now they have a media outlet for it and a much larger audience,” Shaw said. “Does that help promote it? Yes.” According to the child advocacy group Common Sense Media, if your kids are watching viral fight videos, avoid blaming or shaming them. Curiosity, vicarious thrills and fascination are normal behavior for teens who have unprecedented access to a wide range of violent videos online. Kids should be taught to tap into feelings of empathy so that violence never appears to be “normal.” In addition, the videos can be a starting point for a discussion about non-violent conflict resolution techniques. Shaw said that kids often behave differently online than they do at school, and frequently don’t see the real-world consequences of their actions. He said it is up to parents and teachers to educate kids about good citizenship on the Internet.
“The world in which our kids are growing up is very different from the one you and I grew up in,” he said. |