Tensions mount at OHS

Jeffrey Jackson
Posted: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 11:39 pm

By JEFFREY JACKSON
jjackson@owatonna.com

OWATONNA — They’re frustrated, they’re concerned, and, frankly, they’re scared.
Parents of several Owatonna High School students involved in what the parents say was a racially motivated fight at OHS on Monday are questioning whether the school administration is doing enough to prevent such fights from happening.
Monday’s altercation between four white students and a group of Somali students — how many Somalis were actively involved is in dispute — ended with one of the white students going to the hospital. The student, a senior at OHS, spent the night in the hospital after medical personnel feared that he might have swelling on the brain.
And the parents fear that the violence — violence that the parents consider to be a “hate crime” — is far from over.
“I’m concerned not just for our own children, but for everybody else’s,” said the mother of one of the boys.
The high school students and their parents spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying they feared further threats and violence if their names were made public.
But as angry as the parents are about Monday’s fight, they are equally upset with the actions — or what they say is inaction — by the high school administration to address their concerns about what happened on Monday and the days leading up to it.
“Our frustration is that they knew something might happen,” one parent said Wednesday. “Why didn’t they do anything?”
And, the parents contend, ever since Monday’s incident, the administration has not responded to their concerns.
When news of the altercation began to filter back to parents, several parents went to the high school to find out what had happened and to make certain their children were safe. Only when the parents, about 15 in all, gathered in a conference at the school did they begin to get some answers from the administration about the incident, the parents said. And even then, they said, the answers weren’t satisfying.
“They said they didn’t have any information for us,” one parent said. “They said they were still in the interviewing process and couldn’t tell us anything.”
“They’re failing to protect the students in the school,” another parent added. “And they’re still not addressing them today.”
But administrators from the Owatonna school district said Wednesday afternoon that the school is addressing the issue. The problem, school officials said, was that at the time the parents first approached the school on Monday, the administrators were trying to sort out exactly what happened and what actions needed to be taken.
“They wanted instant results,” said OHS Principal Don Johnson. “Within two hours everyone wanted it determined who all the guilty parties were, what they did and what should be done. That’s unrealistic.”
Furthermore, Johnson said, the reaction of some of the parents, especially the parents of the white children involved in Monday’s incident, has only exacerbated the problems at the school.
“The fear of the parents has instilled fear within the students,” Johnson said. “And the fear of their children is creating fear among other students.”

Monday’s fight
Although the actual fight between the white students and the Somali students happened Monday, the parties agree that the roots of the fight can be traced back to a paper written for an English composition class earlier in the month.
The senior who ended up in the hospital on Monday was given an assignment to write a paper for the class and post it on the class’ blog for other students to read and comment on. He posted the paper on Friday, Nov. 6.
He chose as his topic what he called “Somalian privileges” and wrote in his paper that the Somali students in the high school were allowed to “bend the rules.” As one example, he said that though most students weren’t allowed to wear hats in school, the Somali students routinely wore hats without being told to take them off.
Within a half hour, after the class had been dismissed, he was surrounded by a “pretty big group” of Somali students who had been given copies of the paper from other students in the class, the boy said. The Somalis were, the boy said, “pushing, yelling and asking questions” — specifically asking him if he had written the paper.
The boy, who is on work release allowing him to leave school early, left and went to the place where his mother works. A few hours later, the mother received a telephone call from one of the school’s vice principals who first informed the mother about the incident and about the paper that had been posted online.
“No threats were made,” OHS Vice Principal Julie Sullivan said Wednesday about the Nov. 6th incident.
Sullivan did say that she was approached that day by several Somali students who were upset about what the boy had written on the class blog.
The next Tuesday — there were no classes on Monday — the boy and his mother met with Sullivan after the vice principal had called Monday evening requesting a meeting. At that meeting, Sullivan informed the pair that the boy was going to be suspended for four days because of what he had written in the paper.
“I was not happy for him writing that paper,” the mother said.
But, she said, although the official paperwork says the boy was being suspended for “language and inappropriate comments” and that the vice president did talk “briefly” about the paper, the real reason the boy was suspended was concerns by the administration that the boy might be attacked if he remained in school.
“She mentioned that several times,” the mother said of Sullivan. “She said it was for his safety.”
It is a point that school administrators reject handily.
“The reason he was suspended was for what he had written,” Johnson said. “It was inappropriate, inflammatory and inaccurate.”
Johnson did acknowledge that he and Sullivan had discussed that as “byproduct” of the suspension, the boy would “not be available to be threatened.” But, he emphasized, the boy was not suspended to protect him from any threat or perceived threat.
What’s more, he said, administrators were not concerned at that time that the boy was in any danger of being attacked when he returned to school.
“We were expecting the four or five days to be a cooling off period,” Johnson said.
And, he said, there was no specific plan on what to do when the boy returned to school the following Tuesday.
“We suspend students regularly for saying or doing things inappropriately,” Johnson said. “We do not on a regular basis have something that includes a re-entry program.”
He said, however, that if a parent or a student calls the school with a concern about the student’s safety when the student returns to school, then the school will address those concerns. But, he said, they did not receive such a call.
What’s more, he said, on the weekend before the boy returned to school, the boy sent text messages to some Somali students — messages that Johnson characterized as “inflammatory.”
The boy’s mother acknowledged Wednesday that she had been told this week about the text messages, but said that the message was only that the boy was not going to apologize to the Somali students for what he had written in his paper.
Shortly after the boy returned to school Monday, the incident began.
The boy was sitting with three of his friends in the school’s C Plaza when, he said, he was approached by a group of Somali students.
“They were out for blood,” one of his friends said.
The boys said that at least 30, perhaps as many as 40, Somali students were involved in the altercation. School officials dispute that number, saying that some of the Somalis who were there were bystanders who were watching the fight take place. Owatonna Police Chief Shaun LaDue, whose department is investigating the incident, said Wednesday that “no less than 20 people” were involved in some fashion in the incident.
The boys said that many of the Somalis involved in the fight approached the boy after wrapping their hands with bandanas. When the boy’s friends rose to help their friend, they, too, were caught up in the fight, they said.
After the fight was broken up, the boy’s mother was called to the school. He complained about a headache and had four bumps on his head. When his mother took him to the hospital ER, the hospital kept him overnight for observation.
Representatives from the Somali community declined comment, saying only that they, too, were worried about the children’s safety and were afraid of retaliation to the Somali community.
“We want peace,” a representative said.

An escalating problem?
Monday’s fight wasn’t the first such incident, said Chief LaDue, though the earlier incident involved a different cast of characters. The two incidents, however, are similar in other respects.
In the first incident, a letter was written with disparaging remarks made about a local Somali restaurant and the people who frequent it. A group of Somali students approached the letter writer and said something to him. By some accounts, the letter writer was hit in the head.
But, LaDue said, the first incident did not rise to the level of Monday’s fight.
“This has been escalating,” he said, adding that the two incidents, both happening within the last month, were the first incidents of racial tension that he has seen at the school.
LaDue said that after the first incident, school officials did intervene and get involved.
“They thought they had the problem rectified,” he said. “They certainly didn’t take it lightly.”
Following Monday’s incident, however, parents are questioning whether the school is doing enough to make sure the students are safe. They question why school officials did not inform the staff about the boy’s suspension for writing the paper, why the students haven’t been approached about the issue, and why there are not more teachers on the lookout for any potential problems.
“They should’ve called in the forces,” one parent said. “The students should’ve been addressed after the first letter was sent.”
“These people running the school, what the hell are they thinking?” another parent added.
Johnson said that the school does not send out notices to teachers if a student has been suspended.
“There’s no particular reason to send a message,” he said.
He said that he has spoken to the teachers “in the broader sense” about the tension between the white and Somali population in the school and has since sent a notice out to teachers about the students involved, asking them to pay attention and to monitor more closely what is going on in the hallways. And, he said, at the end of the school day on Wednesday, he got on the intercom and addressed the issue with the student body.
“I said, ‘This is not who we are at OHS. This is not how we treat each other here,’” he said.
Additional altercations were reported at the school on Wednesday.

What’s next?
Monday’s incident has been turned over to the Owatonna Police Department for investigation, LaDue said Wednesday. His department is considering charges of disorderly conduct and fifth-degree assault, LaDue said. And, he said, it is possible that hate crime provisions could be attached to the charges, making them more serious. But, he added, such investigations take time and the community needs to be patient.
“Let’s give the system the opportunity to work,” he said.
In the meantime, the school district has met with parents from both sides of Monday’s incident and plan to meet with them again.
“We are responding to the issue,” said Dr. Tom Tapper, the Owatonna school district superintendent.
On Wednesday afternoon, Tapper met with administrators from the various schools to talk about the next steps and to learn from police how the investigation was going.
“We are developing the opportunity to have a community forum about what’s taking place not only in our schools, but in our community as a whole,” Tapper said. “But we have to get through this incident first. Then we can get people back to a perspective that is calm and insightful.”
As for the parents of some of the boys involved in Monday’s incident, they said they plan to attend next week’s school board meeting to express their concerns.
“If the school is not going to protect our kids, we’re going to protect our kids,” a parent said.

Jeffrey Jackson can be reached at 444-2371.