Williams police officers said they will continue to work with the school district and parents to curb fights orchestrated on school grounds for the purpose of posting the videos on social media.
Law enforcement agencies across the country have seen a rise in the dangerous trend with youth establishing actual “fight” pages that encourage others to send in videos for them to post.
“I think it’s a problem anytime you have an Instagram page – whoever it is – and you’ve got students and parents following a page with nothing but school fights,” said Williams Police Lt. Chris Miller.
School districts and parents fear the behavior will result in more students being violently targeted for the purpose of entertainment in an effort for the students to make their videos go viral.
Williams officials said it was school officials that alerted them to the videos and, so far, police have not been called at the time the fights actually occur.
Williams Councilman Sajit Singh said he and Chief Jim Saso attended the meeting of the school board, which is also investigating and trying to respond to the anti-social behavior on social media.
“If you are a parent of a child that goes to school there, there should be some concern with these fights breaking out, and they end up on SnapChat or whatever social media it is,” Singh said. “This is a serious issue, and, if you are a parent, you should be concerned. It’s scary.”
A cursory internet search for “fight club” at schools produced numerous results, showing the social media trend picking up in schools long before the COVID-19 shutdown – and then resuming as more students went back to campuses.
According to a CBS news report in 2016, a fight club on the campus of Nevada Union High School in Grass Valley was reported to have existed for years. According to a Los Angeles Times article, a special education teacher at another Northern California high school was arrested in 2019 for starting a fight club in his classroom. There were other reports of teachers or parents being involved, often acting as “referees,” although most social media fight pages belong to the students.
Orchestrated and recorded school fights in elementary and high schools, later posted on social media, abound not only in the U.S., but in Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom.
While reports indicate that students who are aware of social media fight pages often don’t alert authorities out of fear of being targeted, others consider these trends – like Tik Tok challenges – signs of the times.
“It’s obviously a generational change,” Miller said. “Everything is posted online. You can see the kids driving around town and they have their Instagram handle or sticker on the side of their car.”
Miller said that while things are “not like they used to be,” the police department will be proactive with the school district and parents to try and stay ahead of the problem.
Singh also said parents were stepping up to get involved, with many attending school board meetings to see the problem gets addressed.
“I will say that a lot of parents were there,” Singh said. “They showed up and they cared, and that was refreshing to see. That place was packed and everybody there that was speaking was very composed and not putting blame out there blatantly.” ■