“Officers needed pepper spray for school fights”

Posted by [email protected] | Sep 25, 2015 | Education | 0 |

• February 12, 2014

The irony is painful. On Monday, I posted here about a new Non-Violent Club at the Douglas Campus. The post describes student driven clubs seeking to counter the culture of violence that too often plagues city schools. I have received much positive feedback and was very happy to publicize these important efforts.

Then on Tuesday I had to read about more fights and disruption at Douglass in Officials: Officers needed pepper spray for school fights”

It was hard not to despair. At the same time, such incidents only reinforce the need for these Clubs. So what can be done? Follow the lead of Douglass and Wilson. How about a Non-Violent Club in every school. Let’s get started. Contact the Director of the M.K. Gandhi Institute, Kit Miller , and find out how your school can form its own.

Tagged Frederick Douglass campus, Gandhi Institute, Non-Violence Clubs, school violence

About The Author

[email protected]

Welcome to Talker of the Town! My name is David Kramer. I have a Ph.D in English and teach at Keuka College. I am a former and still active Fellow at the Nazareth College Center for Public History and a Storyteller in Residence at the SmallMatters Institute. Over the years, I have taught at Monroe Community College, the Rochester Institute of Technology and St. John Fisher College. I have published numerous Guest Essays, Letters, Book Reviews and Opinion pieces in The New York Times, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the Buffalo News, the Rochester Patriot, the Providence Journal, the Providence Business News, the Brown Alumni Magazine, the New London Day, the Boston Herald, the Messenger Post Newspapers, the Wedge, the Empty Closet, the CITY, Lake Affect Magazine and Brighton Connections. My poetry appears in The Criterion: An International Journal in English and Rundenalia and my academic writing in War, Literature and the Arts and Twentieth Century Literary Criticism. Starting in February 2013, I wrote for three Democratic and Chronicle blogs, "Make City Schools Better," "Unite Rochester," and the "Editorial Board." When my tenure at the D & C ended, I wanted to continue conversations first begun there. And start new ones. So we created this new space, Talker of the Town, where all are invited to join. I don’t like to say these posts are “mine.” Very few of them are the sole product of my sometimes overheated imagination. Instead, I call them partnerships and collaborations. Or as they say in education, “peer group work.” Talker of the Town might better be Talkers of the Town. The blog won’t thrive without your leads, text, pictures, ideas, facebook shares, tweets, comments and criticisms.