Only a few weeks into the 25-26 school year, multiple fights have broken out across the Thousand Oaks High School campus, causing stress and panic among students.
Many students have noticed that most of the fights have been between this year’s freshmen class.
“This year the freshmen are wild”, an anonymous student said, with people starting most of the fights because of gossip and misunderstandings.
“The main reason why [one fight started] was because they were talking bad about each other,” the student also said. But why should you care what other people think?”
Josh Eby, the Assistant Principal of Facilities, Athletics, and Safety at TOHS, has been dealing with the altercations on campus and is taking action.
“Normally, fights start with verbal exchanges and sometimes history and people escalate from there,” Eby said.
Michael Godfrey, the Assistant Principal of Student Life, also shared his perspective on the topic, expressing how fights often aren’t sudden.
“Some of the things that happen out in the community often flow into [our school],” Godfrey said. “Things happen during summer [that cause problems] at the beginning of the school year.”
Due to confidentiality issues, details on the students who have been involved remain unknown, but one thing remains clear: the fights are violent and ruin the tranquility on campus..
Another anonymous student witnessed one of the chaotic fights themself.
“Two people fighting and then a bunch of people around them huddling, filming, and cheering them on,” the anonymous source said.
The students on campus seem to find these occurrences between their peers unserious. With many people often laughing and joking about situations like this happening, where individuals get hurt over what they find to be idiotic. However, promoting violence can lead to rising tensions on campus.
“It’s just this societal norm that this is normal, and it’s not,” Godfrey said. “People trying to make light of a bad situation for their own gain is disturbing to me.”
The consequences of every fight are the same across the CVUSD school district and are not taken lightly.
“Generally speaking, any fight is an automatic suspension; there have been cases where it can be 5 days,” Godfrey said.
This year there have been seven fights; surpassing the previous two school years, where there seemed to have been none at all.
Yet, this rise in student-led fights on campus is not just an occurrence at TOHS.
“This is not only happening at our campus, we’re very well aware that it’s happening at other campuses as well,” Godfrey said.
Multiple other high schools are going through the same situations regarding their students.
“TOHS has a reputation for keeping their students safe during the school year. You shouldn’t feel afraid walking through the hallways, because most of these fights have been between “people who associate with each other,” Godfrey said.
The fights have since calmed down since the start of the year, and with optimism, this problem should continue to subside. Hopefully, all will remain calm at TOHS for the remainder of the school year.
