Recordings of high school fights leave administrators wondering what to do

Huddled outside a classroom building, students form a circle around two boys about to brawl. Girls scream. Boys egg them on. As the punches fly, someone yells, “Hurry up!” as a teacher approaches. The video stops.

So far, this grainy footage shot at Vallejo’s Jesse Bethel High School has been watched more than 4,000 times on the Internet. Other videos like it, from other high schools in the Vallejo City Unified School District - and throughout the country - have been posted online, too.

“People like to talk about who got beat up,” said Hogan High School 12th-grader Angelina Bee, expressing concerns about the use of camera cell phones on campus. “They say, ‘Oh, did you see the video?’ ”

In a district working to reduce the number of school fights, Vallejo administrators are facing a new issue - students using camera phones to record and post punch-outs online.

But as officials look at the video-recorded fights popping up on the Internet, they are wondering what else is being posted. In an age when legions of tech-savvy teens are uploading and sharing digital images online, and carrying cell phones with built-in video cameras, questions arise about privacy risks.

But how do you regulate the use of new technology without banning cell phones, which many parents desire their children to carry?

The answer is unclear.

“Basically, what’s happening here is technology has gotten ahead of school district policy,” said Jason Hodge, spokesman for the Vallejo City Unified School District. “It’s a murky area in the law right now. We’ll certainly look at developing a policy dealing with it, but there are potential free speech issues (in banning the use of cameras).”

In districts across the country, educators are discovering, often regrettably, the many potential abuses of the devices on campus. Hodge said he fears students using them in locker rooms and bathrooms.

Regina Vasquez, a Hogan High sophomore, said the use of camera phones is widespread - and they are being used inappropriately by some students.

“It’s dangerous,” Vasquez said, adding that many girls worry about their pictures being uploaded to the Internet without them knowing about it. “We’re young and you never know who’s out there.”

There is also the difficulty removing videos and images once they are released into Cyberspace.

“Once it’s up there, it can spread in a quick minute,” Vasquez said.

All four of Vallejo’s public high schools ban the use of cell phones during class time. Some teachers tell their students they are not allowed to take photos and videos of others without their permission. But these days, when campus rules are somewhat blurry, some administrators have used videos recorded on students’ cell phones as evidence to suspend other students for fighting, Hodge said.

“If we can identify students (breaking school policy on video), we can use that for disciplinary action,” Hodge said, adding that Bethel High administrators have used student-generated videos for that purpose.

However, the Bethel High administrators said they were unaware of students posting videos online of on-campus fights.

“It’s a loss of innocence,” said Vallejo school board member Ward Stewart, who’s seen some of the videos online.

Stewart, 28, said school board members throughout the country will want to clamp down on digital content produced by minors, especially if parents feel the content is harmful to their children. However, he said, it’s not feasible to ban cell phones with video capability altogether.

“Where can the lines of regulation be drawn and how do you go

about enforcing those lines?” Stewart asked. “The potential for an event to be audio- or video-recorded anytime, anywhere, is a reality.”

The debate over appropriate technology use at schools has emerged as access to Internet video-sharing has moved into the mainstream. YouTube, which launched in 2005, attracted 55 million users a month in 2007, according to Nielson/NetRratings. More than 10 million users were under 18.

A simple search on the YouTube home page unearths fight footage from Bethel, as well as Vallejo and Hogan high schools.

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