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AS SCHOOL ON SCHOOL VIOLENCE ESCALATES SAFETY HITS A NEW LOW

School violence has escalated to the point where Samoana High School students were told last Friday “that if they need to head towards the west side of the island, please REMOVE their SHS uniform for safety reasons,” in addition to avoiding the Fagatogo Marketplace “as much as possible”.

 

The SHS school principal is on leave and could not be reached for comment yesterday, but Samoa News understands that the announcement was made over the school’s intercom last Friday.

 

The announcement follows several fights and beatings that have occurred between students of different high schools, with some kids getting jumped just for wearing their school uniform in the wrong part of town.

 

Last week, a photo of Samoana students — identified by their uniforms — attempting to burn a Tafuna High School uniform was plastered all over the internet and garnered numerous comments on Facebook, with some cheering on the act while others expressing their disgust and anger at how school violence has escalated over the years.

 

A concerned teacher, who wished to remain anonymous, said the animosity has gotten so out of hand, that now all students, even teachers, are and will be affected by it. “Getting beat up just for wearing your school uniform is ridiculous. This is getting way too out of hand.”

 

Many speculate that the burning of the Tafuna uniform by Samoana students was in reaction to the recent ASHSAA football championship game where the Warriors beat the Sharks 44-6.

 

Efforts to obtain comments from the DOE main office on what the Education Department is going to do to address the issue were unsuccessful as of press time yesterday.

 

OUR FACEBOOK PAGE HAS THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE FROM SAMOA NEWS WITH THE PHOTO:

 

This photo has been tagged to Samoa News (on our Facebook page) several times and now we are getting inbox messages questioning why we haven't posted it up.

 

We have also been accused of being anti-Tafuna by posting up the fight video and holding this picture up of Samoana students blatantly fueling the fire of violence between schools.

 

Only two words comes to mind when looking at this photo:

 

ig·no·rance ˈignərəns/

 

noun lack of knowledge, lack of education, unenlightenment, illiteracy;lack of intelligence, stupidity, foolishness, idiocy"both ignorance and poverty contribute to the growing problem of violence and fights”

 

vi·o·lence noun \\ˈvī-lən(t)s, ˈvī-ə-\\

 

: the use of physical force to harm someone, to damage property, etc.: great destructive force or energy

 

We had to decide... do we continue to show the world how ignorant some of our youth have become and how violent? or do we ignore it and hope it will die out if we do not direct more attention to it?

 

Sadly, because of the power and speed of technology, the photo is already circulating the net. We would like to point out though, the last couple of times we have posted up instances of violence between schools we have noticed that most of the VIOLENT reactions and comments to the pics, vids, sports events are not comments from students themselves but parents and Alumni who are no longer in High School. Please parents and former HIGH School students and alumni, we need to HELP stop the VIOLENCE not egg it on.

 

School Pride is one thing but the safety of our youth while going to school should be our top priority.

 

We are enraged with the ACTS we are seeing our youth perform and the extent to which they are going to show School Pride, while at the same time we are saddened to see that Fa'aaloalo & Alofa, the core values of our Fa'asamoa have now been replaced with ignorance and violence.

 

Amerika Samoa ala mai. Fautua le fanau ina ne'i te'i ua tuai. We are waiting for a response from DOE as to what can be done to STOP these kind of ACTS from being filmed, shot, and enacted on school property. BAN PHONES? I-PADS, I-PODS, CAMERAS?