AHS Students Against Violence allege recent incidents go unaddressed at Asheville High

Posted on — Jeff Fobes

Allegations of recent violence at Asheville High school have surfaced via an Aug. 28 email sent to Mountain Xpress, other local media outlets, as well as school officials. The email was sent by a group identifying itself only as “Asheville Students Against Violence,” without any individual names included. We have as yet no further information about accuracy of the alleged incidents, but are making inquiries. The text of the email is as follows:

AHS Students Against Violence is a group of Asheville High School students who don’t feel safe in our own school. Just today 8/28 and yesterday, 2 seriously injured students were taken from our school unconscious on stretchers after bloody fist fights. We have only been back in school for a week this year and already the violence has started. None of the teachers, administrators or police at AHS appears to be in control and it seems like there is no awareness outside of our school. Last year was the same.

We need more people to know about the problem of violence at AHS and for adults to help make our school safe. Please come into our school and ask questions. Talk to the teachers and the students. Find the girl who accidentally put her hand in fresh blood left on the wall after a huge fight last year. Find out why nobody cleaned off the blood from the walls 3 days after the fight. Find the boy who spent 10 minutes hiding in a locked bathroom stall while other students brawled in the bathroom with no interruption or consequence.

As students, our job is to go to school, work on our grades and have fun with our friends. We believe the pen is mightier than the sword, so we are writing all of you together now to anonymously to expose this major problem of ongoing violence. Fixing the problem is your job and we are asking for your help.

Sincerely,
AHS Students Against Violence

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About Jeff Fobes
As a long-time proponent of media for social change, my early activities included coordinating the creation of a small community FM radio station to serve a poor section of St. Louis, Mo. In the 1980s I served as the editor of the "futurist" newsletter of the U.S. Association for the Club of Rome, a professional/academic group with a global focus and a mandate to act locally. During that time, I was impressed by a journalism experiment in Mississippi, in which a newspaper reporter spent a year in a small town covering how global activities impacted local events (e.g., literacy programs in Asia drove up the price of pulpwood; soybean demand in China impacted local soybean prices). Taking a cue from the Mississippi journalism experiment, I offered to help the local Green Party in western North Carolina start its own newspaper, which published under the name Green Line. Eventually the local party turned Green Line over to me, giving Asheville-area readers an independent, locally focused news source that was driven by global concerns. Over the years the monthly grew, until it morphed into the weekly Mountain Xpress in 1994. I've been its publisher since the beginning. Mountain Xpress' mission is to promote grassroots democracy (of any political persuasion) by serving the area's most active, thoughtful readers. Consider Xpress as an experiment to see if such a media operation can promote a healthy, democratic and wise community. In addition to print, today's rapidly evolving Web technosphere offers a grand opportunity to see how an interactive global information network impacts a local community when the network includes a locally focused media outlet whose aim is promote thoughtful citizen activism. Follow me @fobes
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5 thoughts on “AHS Students Against Violence allege recent incidents go unaddressed at Asheville High”

  1. Local

    Keep making it public. As long as it’s published and well-known, it will be taken care of. Bad schools impact property values. Trust me; keep putting it in the newspaper.

  2. Actual Student

    As an actual student at the high school, this email is complete bull. Asheville high has a bad rep because of students like these, who like to dish on the school without knowing the facts. There have been no fights thus far, and the numbers went way down last year as a result of new administration. The students taken out on stretchers experienced seizures. Shame on you Mountain Express for publishing this crap.

    • LeNoir Medlock (parent of AHS students)

      It is irresponsible of the Mountain Express to publish what looks like an official article about a local high school without checking the facts. Asheville High has a lot of wonderful programs, students, faculty and staff all working very hard against the tide of non-funding from Raleigh and people who seem to have some kind of weird vendetta. Please, check the facts before you put more negativity into this world about our communities high school.

      • HamsterWheel

        Kids will think this kind of stuff is normal if their parents think this is normal. You have to break the vicious cycle somewhere.

    • Jeff Fobes

      Thanks for your comments. Xpress followed up this report with information from Asheville City Schools saying, “There were no fights or altercations involving injuries at Asheville High School on the week that ended Aug. 28, according to school officials who have disputed allegations of school violence made in an email said to be from a group calling itself Asheville Students Against Violence.”
      That article is posted here: http://mountainx.com/news/no-violent-incidents-at-asheville-high-school-last-week-officials-say/

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