The way to fight gangs in schools is the way we have fought other threats to student safety: With reasonable rules that define criminal or anti-social behavior, and with safeguards in place to enforce those rules. Don’t locker checks and metal detectors beat dress codes and suppression of free speech when it comes to stopping violence and the drug trade?
Even Durham school board attorney Ann Majestic noted that there are no static signs of gang activity.
“It’s a configuration of things that is indicative of gang involvement,” she said last week, adding that “the indices of gang involvement [are] changing all the time.”
Can a policy keep up with gang affiliations? Apparently not.
That’s an important piece of information to consider, now that the N.C. Supreme Court ruled that a lower court must review Durham Public Schools’ anti-gang policy to see if it is so vague that it falls short of constitutional standards.
Four of the seven points addressed in the policy deal with actions for which non-gang members might be suspended: Tagging, making threats, inciting violence and committing illegal acts, all of which are covered elsewhere in district policy.
It’s wrong to kick students out for their associations, no matter how unsavory, when the students’ right to free association is protected by the Constitution.
Is it a waste of time to try to enforce the current anti-gang policy? Is it a waste of money to fund a court fight over free speech and assembly questions, including whether students can be kicked out for throwing signs, wearing specific clothing or shoes, or soliciting new gang members.
That time might be better spent in considering what to do with gang members who are still attending school.
We can’t fight facts: The money and power of gang membership attracts young people.
But young people in America – even gang members – are required to attend public schools, and not just because we need to warehouse people who are too young to work.
The reason we support public schools with tax dollars is that we, as a community, believe in the transformative power of the classroom. We believe that education changes lives for the better.
Usually, we’re talking about education in terms of math and language skills, and gang violence and drug trade should not be permitted to disrupt this important mission.
But there’s a different kind of education, too, and if our schools are about elevating people out of ignorance and poverty, we have to do a better job than the gangs. They are our competition, and the kids are at stake.
As long as we have access to young gang members, we have an opportunity, and Durham Public Schools’ anti-gang policy should address it. These kids are not lost, they are safer in classrooms and we have a window for intervention. We should take it.
