Students have been in school for a little over a month and there have already been over 12 fights. Most students involved in fights have been younger underclassmen. This could be because younger students might not be as mature as upperclassmen and because they want to make a name for themselves for attention. This article is going to dive into the reasons why students decide to fight at school rather than doing the fight outside of school. Do students fight for attention seeking, or do they do it just because they may have nowhere else to do it? Or do they fight just because they simply hate each other? These are all questions that need to be answered to understand the anatomy of a fight. 

There could be many reasons why a fight could break out. Whether it can be from something very stupid like accidently screenshotting someones post or story, or because of a big reason like saying bad things behind a persons back. There is one big reason as to why fights were to happen and it could be because the people involved were friends before. People have claimed that this could be the main reason that fights start. In a KTR interview conducted back in 2019, a student was asked “Did you guys have any beef before?”, and the person responded with “Not at all actually we were really close.” This backs up the claim that the cause of student altercations happen because of a falling out in a friendship. Students would rarely fight someone unless they formally had some sort of connection or friendship. 

In an interview back in 2019, a person was asked “How many fights have you witnessed in high school?” for an article about student altercations that is similar to this one. They responded with “I would probably say I have witnessed around 10 fights.” Ten fights in the course of a year is significant but compared to this year, CHS has already reached that number within the first month. This large number is abnormally high especially for a place that has been called a “great school” or a “great community”.

Safety is the number one reason why student altercations need to come to an end. Anything could happen and safety has to be a priority before anything else. In another interview in 2019 regarding student altercations, a former administrator was asked “At CHS would you say that fights are a problem you’re looking to address or are there other things you are more focused on?”. At the time of the interview there hadn’t been a high frequency of fights but the person who was asked said “It can be traumatic to students because they can get hurt so that is always a priority for us”. There has always been a clear intention to make sure that safety is a big factor to address in a student altercation. 

Social media is another one of those big reasons as to why students want to fight at school. Students could be seeking attention and most of the time, they will get that attention because there will be videos on pretty much all platforms after the fight happens. Stopping the spread of fight videos on social media could potentially slow the frequency of fights because the students involved in the altercation won’t get the attention they desired. In a survey released a couple days ago, a question that was asked was “What do you think sparks a fight?”. The student responded with “arguments on social media”. This statement backs up the claim that social media is a big factor to what leads up to fights. 

Based on the facts and figures floating around CHS, we have come to the conclusion that fights start for two reasons. They fight for attention seeking and also because they don’t like each other. Fights also start because 2 people had a falling out in a friendship. There are many more reasons as to why a fight would start but these are the most typical reasons. Now although fights are very hard to prevent from happening, there are ways to possibly slow them down. Some ways could be by bringing the CHS community together to do communal activities, like doing a tailgate before a game, or encouraging more people to come out to sporting events. These kinds of events or activities can help CHS students do fun things together so students can feel happy to be around each other.  CHS needs to come up with a plan to try to slow the frequency of fights; however, we know it will take some time. CHS needs to look at the consequences of fighting to see if more could be done about fights.  We need to vocalize our need for safety, but also realize that it won’t happen very quickly.