Students to Pay for Massive Food Fight
Feb 28, 6:45 PM (ET)
CHESTERTON, Ind. (AP) - A massive middle school food fight left several students suspended and the eighth-grade class footing the cleaning bill that included the cost of scraping mashed potatoes off the ceiling.
Last week's fight at Chesterton Middle School left ceiling tiles damaged and could cost the students as much as $1,000 to pay for overtime, maintenance and repairs, said Duneland School Corporation Superintendent Dirk Baer. "It wasn't just one or two kids throwing grapes," Baer said. "There were mashed potatoes sticking to the ceiling."
Security cameras captured the fracas that broke out about halfway through the 25-minute lunch period Wednesday at the school in the town 15 miles east of Gary. The school suspended between six and 10 students for two or three days for launching the day's menu of chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes and milk into the air.
As many as 50 students might have been involved. Principal Jim Ton recommended one student be expelled. Cleaning costs will be taken from the eighth grade's extracurricular activity fund.
Baer said the whole class was punished because many of the grade's 500 students knew about plans for the food fight but failed to alert administrators. "It was planned and it was widely known that it would happen, but nobody said anything," Baer said. "Everybody has to take responsibility."
Information from: Post-Tribune, http://www.post-trib.com
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I understand the juvenile urge to create havoc with little regard or concern for who would be tasked with cleaning up and paying for cleaning up the mess.
Since I am no longer a juvenile, I read this story and thought "MAKE THEM PAY! SEND BILLS TO THE PARENTS! EXPELL ALL 50!"
But the damage was only $1000. That's two bucks a piece for each student or $20 for each actual offender. Not enough punishment.
There must be some way to humiliate these kids, take some of their thunder away.
But maybe I've become the principal in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, "I'll get you, Bueller!"
Pictures:
Food Fight
Ed Rooney
7 comments:
Hmmm...maybe your job (and being an observant grown-up person) just shows you that lessions NOT learned in one's youth (such as bad behavior creates bad consequences)is a dangerous thing.
I go to CMS. I'm also an eight grader, I didn't partake, but I knew it was gonna happen, actually, I only found out when I sat down about 10 minutes before the fight. As for the administrators not knowing it was gonna happen, that's not true. Many people saw a person tell a teacher. The thing is, the teachers didn't think it was gonna be serious, one kid throws some milk, he gets caught and nothing happens. However, the teachers did nothing and they had more supervisors that day then other days who let kids walk by with three pounds of mashed potatoes on a tray. Inattentive? Stupid? Genius (giving us a rope to hang ourselves with)? I don't know but even the kids, who they mark as conspirators, thought that nothing big would happen. Evidently, we and the admin alike underestimated the strength of mob mentality and the moxie of those who started it. I saw some really smart kids start throwing like no tomorrow. Stop speaking of punishments, our admin does nothing to punish us. They think taking our farewell dance away will make a difference, though Ton says he's only taking money, not the privelige away. Suspensions do nothing, it is an outdated system for when parents cared. They also outlawed mashed potatoes, though they still serve salad with dressing, and let kids bring their lunch. We could have another food fight if we were determined. There new rules have done nothing to prevent this. Spreading us out over a larger area in the cafeteria just gives us more area to cover. If they would think, they'd take away our privilege to eat in a cafeteria. Besides, much worse happens which they could focus on, the drugs in our school, the fights, the threats, the bullying, the people contemplating suicide. Our admin has much bigger things to worry about. To the admin, WAKE UP.
Wow. I wish you were not anonymous because you are very articulate for an eigth grader.
I think you described the level of the "crime" well. I supposed I'm jaded because I only get to hear about the middle schoolers who are basically four years away from going to big boy (and girl) jail.
Anon, stick around, your company is welcome around the Panic pond. Just don't throw food :-)
an eighth grader who uses the word "moxie"??? impressive, to say the least.
no shit! way to go, 8th grader!
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I'm an 8th grader this year and now they have a police officer at CMS (i dont know if they had one when this happened) Officer Randy is like a hall monitor but he is at the cafateria everyday now(unless theres a drug bust and CHS or CMS).... They r strict somewhat but most of the time all the teachers ignore what we say/do we don't get in trouble much. I personally think the don't enforce the rules like the should....... If only u were a student of CMS now. Oh also the theme for Farewell is the Titanic.... Im looking forward to see what it will look like.....and how the 8th graders will act
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