Carisa Lee

In the last term of the 2021/2022 school year, when most of the stu­dent pop­u­la­tion was rein­te­grat­ed in­to phys­i­cal school af­ter two years of vir­tu­al learn­ing, sev­er­al videos of school vi­o­lence sur­faced on so­cial me­dia.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and oth­er bod­ies grap­pled with ways to curb what seemed to be a grow­ing prob­lem.

Head­lines de­tail­ing in­ci­dents of vi­o­lence and stake­hold­ers com­ment­ing on ways to treat with the is­sue were plas­tered in the dai­ly news­pa­pers and sig­nif­i­cant­ly fea­tured on TV in the first half of 2022.

Just last week, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion an­nounced that po­lice of­fi­cers will re­main sta­tioned at 17 sec­ondary schools due to high amounts of school vi­o­lence at those in­sti­tu­tions.

But while adults try to find so­lu­tions to deal with school vi­o­lence, the an­swer may lie with the main stake­hold­ers, the stu­dents.

Guardian Me­dia con­duct­ed a fo­cus group on school vi­o­lence with stu­dents from Stan­dard Five to Form Five.

The stu­dents were Alex­ia-Rae Daniel (Bish­op Anstey High School East - Form 5), Josh John (South East Port-of-Spain Sec­ondary - Form 3), Lily Vil­lafana (St Fran­cois Girls’ Col­lege - Form 4), Jacquis Williams (Rich­mond Street Boys’ An­gli­can - Stan­dard 5) and Jay­la Williams (Bish­op Anstey High School - Form 5).

They said cy­ber­bul­ly­ing was one of the main rea­sons for the in­crease in vi­o­lence seen amongst stu­dents in the last term.

“Young chil­dren use so­cial me­dia a lot...even if they men­tion the slight­est things, stu­dents can get of­fend­ed by these things and tend to lash out,” Vil­lafana said.

“Some­body, for in­stance, will throw a sta­tus for this per­son and then peer pres­sure will come in from the oth­er stu­dents like you see what the per­son post about you and when they come in school now, they have to prove some­thing to their peers, “Alex­ia-Rae Daniel added.

Jay­la Williams agreed, say­ing the fights are usu­al­ly the end re­sult of a build-up of bul­ly­ing and provo­ca­tion.

“You just want to lash out at that per­son ... when school open, I go­ing to at­tack John or what­ev­er and then you come out to school and you see John and that is where most of the anger come out be­cause you hold­ing that rage from since when school closed,” Jay­la said.

Ac­cord­ing to the group, stu­dents can be cy­ber­bul­lied for their phys­i­cal ap­pear­ance or so­cial back­ground, pos­si­bly the same rea­sons from decades be­fore but just on a new more pub­lic plat­form.

Williams said he was tor­ment­ed about a bad he used for a cou­ple years and was able to ig­nore the tor­ment but not­ed not every child is as strong­mind­ed.

Jay­la said she was pro­voked about her weight and Daniel said she was laughed at for the sneak­ers she wore.

Vil­lafana added that jeal­ousy can al­so cause a less for­tu­nate stu­dent to abuse oth­ers.

“Chil­dren talk­ing about ‘oh yes, we went on a va­ca­tion to­geth­er and these things tend to trig­ger you’...There will be mi­nor ar­gu­ments be­tween stu­dents talk­ing about oh they went to this fan­cy place, we ate by Jaxx’s or some­place nice like that and stu­dents didn’t re­al­ly get that op­por­tu­ni­ty be­cause of fi­nan­cial is­sues, par­ents ar­gu­ing,” Vil­lafana ex­plained.

Daniel said al­though the ul­ti­mate goal is to stand out, many stu­dents just want to fit in and this is why she be­lieves par­ents should talk to their chil­dren about their cir­cum­stances.

“I might be able to take some­body say­ing look at your shoes, look at this... but some­body else will be like I not tak­ing this. To prove them­selves, they will take it out in anger,” Daniel said.

For the par­ents who fail to ad­dress this is­sue, the group said teach­ers or guid­ance coun­sel­lors should step in be­cause these types of in­ci­dents will oc­cur in schools where there is a mix­ture of stu­dents.

They be­lieve with in­ter­ven­tion at the right time, in­ci­dents like the one in which a 15-year-old Williamsville Sec­ondary School stu­dent stabbed her school­mate would have been stopped, not­ing that when it reach­es a boil­ing point with­out in­ter­ven­tion, there is no turn­ing back.

“They blind­ed by the anger so in their mind they think­ing I will beat this girl re­al bad and the girl will not stab her just so, it had to be a build-up, she must be just snap,” Daniel said.

Josh John added that it’s not dif­fi­cult at all, even with checks by the se­cu­ri­ty and po­lice pa­trols, to get weapons in­to the school com­pound.

“They will ask you to put your bag down and they will search the whole bag but there is still a lot of oth­er places where you will put a weapon in their clothes and pock­ets...or like in bowls of food,” he said.

John said most times, the male gen­der is frisked while the girls pass freely. He said the weapons or con­tra­band can be giv­en to them.

Jay­la added that stu­dents al­so put weapons in text­books. She and Vil­lafana said the equip­ment placed at school to do these checks of­ten mal­func­tions.

How­ev­er, they agreed that ex­pul­sion was not the best so­lu­tion for the Williamsville stu­dent, who was al­so charged by po­lice. Williams sug­gest­ed stu­dents should be ex­pelled af­ter three strikes.

The mem­bers of the fo­cus group said they al­so feel safer with the po­lice pa­trols out­side the schools but not every stu­dent feels that way.

“I see it as a form of pro­tec­tion, but it’s a di­verse cul­ture com­ing in­to schools, so if you ac­cus­tomed to po­lice as a bad thing in your com­mu­ni­ty, you ac­cus­tomed see­ing your fam­i­ly mem­ber, your friends run­ning from po­lice and get­ting shoot be­hind, you wouldn’t see po­lice as a form of pro­tec­tion,” Daniel said.

“I see them as a form of pro­tec­tion, how­ev­er, and this is from my per­spec­tive when I go­ing to school...Po­lice does be there in the morn­ings but when you in school now, po­lice come and just dri­ve around in one cir­cle once and go back out... time it reach evening, a lot of school fights does hap­pen be­cause some­times peo­ple might come to school late, in the evening you does hard­ly see them,” John added.

They not­ed that if more pa­trols oc­curred dur­ing the evening, the in­ci­dent in which a par­ent at­tacked a stu­dent out­side the Mor­vant Laven­tille Sec­ondary School could have been pre­vent­ed.

“If a con­flict hap­pen be­tween two per­sons or even more...if it was my child I would want to fig­ure out the ac­tu­al sto­ry of what hap­pened...if you don’t know the truth, I sug­gest you just go to the po­lice,” John said.

“I find the adults should not jump in a fight.” Williams added.

“Par­ent to par­ent, they should have a con­ver­sa­tion,” Jay­la said.

“I get you care about your child, you ready to jump in, throw hands, every­thing like that, but it re­al­ly isn’t a good look on you be­cause you sup­posed to be more de­vel­oped...You see adults fight­ing like this, you may think that it’s okay,” Vil­lafana said.

But Daniel had a dif­fer­ent view. She said if the rea­son for the par­ent’s in­ter­ven­tion was to pro­tect their child from abuse, she un­der­stands. She said abuse against girls at schools is not tak­en se­ri­ous­ly and some­times young boys cross the line.

“That does dam­age a lot of girls’ self-es­teem and stuff...they brush it off as a game for boys and thing to touch a girl breast or hold her bot­tom and think they take it as cool points but in the re­al world, it’s ha­rass­ment,” she ex­plained.

The stu­dents said in­stead of po­lice and pun­ish­ment, more youth group pro­grammes (po­lice youth clubs) should be im­ple­ment­ed, as well as sem­i­nars with par­ents/teach­ers where stu­dents can ex­plain to adults what is hap­pen­ing in their lives.

Jay­la said they should just con­sult with them first. The group said they are not per­suad­ed by any pub­lic fig­ure com­ing to speak with them but rather dis­tract­ed.

How­ev­er, they did ad­mit that the old­er gen­er­a­tion may not un­der­stand what they face dai­ly.

“Try send­ing in younger peo­ple to talk with the stu­dents be­cause they re­late to younger peo­ple, in­stead of hav­ing old­er folks who came from a dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tion who don’t know mod­ern times right now,” Vil­lafana said.

They all agree, how­ev­er, that they should be in­volved in the con­ver­sa­tion.