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The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club … unless, of course, you’re a concerned parent with children attending the Beaufort County School District (BCSD) in the the South Carolina Lowcountry. In that case, you email the superintendent and school board members and hope they are taking the situation seriously.
Are they, though?
Hailed as the second most diverse school district in the Palmetto State, BCSD and its many accreditations are impressive. The district’s approximately 21,000 students exceeded the state average on mathematics and English studies last year, according to data from the S.C. Department of Education.
BCSD also ranked as the seventh best school district for athletics in the Palmetto State, according to the latest data from Niche.com. And while wrestling is one of many varsity sports available to eligible students, it appears as though pure street fighting — Fight Club style — is offered unofficially within the hallways and classrooms.
WARNING: Video footage contained in this report is violent and may be disturbing to viewers.
(Click to View)
Scarcely two months into the ongoing fall semester, FITSNews has once again received videos of violent, white-knuckle altercations in this district – often accompanied by a roaring crowd of amateur videographers. Understandably, there are at least two sides to every disagreement which our videos fail to showcase.
But the fact so many students are resorting to violence in response to those disagreements is disturbing.
While FITSNews spoke with a myriad of concerned adults, all of them chose to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from some students whom they believe to be gang-affiliated. We could not substantiate allegations of gang affiliations, but we can confirm those concerns prohibited several people from speaking publicly with us about the rash of violence in the district.
“Some fights happen as soon as students get here in the morning,” an anonymous BCSD educator said. “It’s as if they’re plotted the night before and the hallway is where it takes place.”
“The children are on a rampage of demonic behavior and it comes down to accountability,” the educator continued. “We’re not holding the children or their parents accountable.”
(Click to View)
For a better understanding of what the district is doing to address the violence highlighted in this article, FITSNews emailed Candace Bruder, director of communications for BCSD.
To her credit, Bruder responded promptly and substantively to our questions.
Despite two different brawls recorded at Beaufort High School (BHS) this week, Bruder maintained that the number of fights within this institution has actually declined. She says they’ve experienced a 33 percent reduction in fights at BHS compared to this time last year.
At last count, the campus accommodates 1,170 students across grades 9-12.
(Click to View)
Bruder’s response to FITSNews read, in part:
The district is constantly refining our security measures, making necessary adjustments as needed. In addition to our SROs at schools, extra district personnel are deployed to schools as needed.
It’s important to remember that the majority of fights stem from situations taking place off campus, such as activity on social media and community disputes. As such, in addition to measures the school may take to address fights, it’s also necessary for families and communities to help address this problem.
In addition to the above information shared, we have been receiving concerns regarding privacy issues due to adults posting videos of other people’s minor children to their personal social media accounts.
(Click to View)
We asked Bruder whether any students had been arrested or charged for participating in schools fights this semester. She said the district could not comment on specific student matters, but ensured us that disciplinary policies are enforced within the schools – while criminal incidents are reported to local law enforcement.
We reached out to the Beaufort Police Department (BPD), whose officers confirmed that six BHC students were petitioned to family court following campus fights this week. One student could face assault and battery charges.
In a widely publicized case last year, BPD officers charged a Lady’s Island middle school student with assault and Battery in the third degree after a video surfaced of her punching and kicking a classmate.
(Click to View)
As this story goes to press, BCSD is preparing ballots for a county-wide bond referendum aimed at improving school safety and enhancing infrastructure. If approved next month, $439 million of taxpayer money would go towards rebuilding a high school and middle school, constructing a new elementary school and childhood center — among other capitol improvement projects.
Anonymous parents and educators tell FITSNews they’re hesitant to support the referendum until the district acknowledges – and controls – the violence within the district’s existing facilities.
Count on this news outlet to keep our audience up to speed on the latest developments in Beaufort County.
Also, if you have any information about violence in your local school district, please … let us know. We want to investigate it and find out what your local leaders are doing to address it. Finally, FITSNews has an open microphone policy in which we encourage anyone with an intelligent take on any issue we cover to sound off from their perspective.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
Andrew Fancher is a Lone Star Emmy award-winning journalist from Dallas, Texas. Cut from a bloodline of outlaws and lawmen alike, he was the first of his family to graduate college which was accomplished with honors. Got a story idea or news tip for Andy? Email him directly and connect with him socially across Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
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WANNA SOUND OFF?
Got something you’d like to say in response to one of our articles? Or an issue you’d like to proactively address? We have an open microphone policy here at FITSNews! Submit your letter to the editor (or guest column) via email HERE. Got a tip for a story? CLICK HERE. Got a technical question or a glitch to report? CLICK HERE.
14 comments
As the state run indoctrination centers “improve” education this sort of thing will continue to happen and grow. Every school has these problems and every school is becoming more prisons than schools. This is all part of the long term plan born nearly 120 years ago. The downfall of freedom is far along the path to totalitarianism and state run education is the foundation of it’s fall.
I love how every time something like this happens the conspiracy nutters are out in droves talking about how the Illuminati is responsible for it with whatever nefarious methods of brainwashing they have developed.
Yeah, the answer can’t be as simple as children being failed by multiple societal factors ultimately giving them a poor upbringing, and this is the inevitable result of that.
If only teachers could turn water into wine before people like you crucify them.
Looks like the same kids in all the fights
Why is Bril C. Reme always looking at the ground in all of his photos? Yes we know you slather grease in your hair in typical New Jersey Guido fashion to try and look tough, you just come off looking like a douche who has committed journalism suicide by working for this blog.
Omg hey Squishy! Shocked to see you here again since you hate this random journalist’s stories so much?? Do you not have anything better to do with your time? Or are you just killing the hours in between your mom coming down to the basement to hand you your crustless sandwiches and your jerking off time? Oh wait! Is that what you’re doing? Jerking off to the little bit of power your dickless self gets from leaving an anonymous hate comment? Let me know! I’m sure I’ll see you in the comments again the next time you take your hand out of your pants. PS I see more boobs in the morning when I put on my bra than you have in your entire life :)
Just a thought, but why not a “zero tolerance” policy on fighting at school? Pretty effective back in the day. As students, most of us had fear of consequences. Where and what are the consequences in BCS? $400M for new schools??? First of all, my child would not be in this school system with all of this violence. Secondly, shiny new schools are not going to fix that.
Demographics?
They tried that in Florence 1 and now the NAACP has reported the Superintendent to the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights because, apparently, it’s racist if you permanently expel a student for fighting.
It appears to me that the fights are black vs white. The blacks look like the aggressors to me.
How “racist” of you to even think such a thing, much less utter it.
:-D
It seems to me that corporal punishment would probably stop alot of this crap.
So would good parenting but once their parents’ generations decided to be their kid’s “friend” and not punish them, discipline them, or actually raise them, this is what we get. And both generations firmly believe that they are never wrong about anything, ever, and that the world should fall down at their feet and worship them because they are “special”–that’s what the whole “let’s build up the kid’s self-esteem and then they won’t fail school” initiative has brought us to.
A kid with a real father at home doesn’t start fights or disrespect his teachers…because he knows the punishment at home will be 50 times worse than whatever the school can dish out. For these rudderless, amoral, and sadly pathetic feral thug-boyz, that is the number 1 cause of all this, and no amount of funding or leftist social engineering is going to fix it, except maybe the younger, lower- level “B-squad” thugs seeing the bigger “varsity” thugs getting carted straight out in handcuffs and never coming back to school. And this is not a race thing, its a culture thing: poor fatherless white boys generally go down the same path, and the black boys with real fathers are usually all right.
this is unsafe these schools need to be more strict on fights