Students at Arabia Mountain High School, an elite DeKalb County school, set out last week to challenge their image as buttoned-down scholars.
Didn't go so well.
Responding to Facebook and Twitter urgings for #TurnUpThursday, students staged several food fights, flooded bathrooms and set off alarms in an effort, according to social media posts, to not be “lame.”
One popular refrain on Twitter: "I survived #TurnUpThursday at Arabia Mountain High.
”
Administrators were not amused. The tone of the tweets also carried a clear message about the acting-out purpose. Considered one of DeKalb's premier schools, where some students are required to apply to get into the environmental energy and engineering magnet program and parental involvement is high, some might say Arabia Mountain is rather normal.
Now, went one Tweet: “Nobody can call Arabia lame no more.”
Ernest Brown, who has sophomore twins at the school, said he was “embarrassed and frustrated” as a parent, but didn’t think the incidents were that bad overall.
“They were Pranks,” Brown said. “Normal teen behavior, just coming together at once. Just address it and make sure you take appropriate disciplinary actions."
Walter Woods, a spokesman for the district, said the incident, while not as serious as blogs and social media sites would suggest, has placed discipline atop the system’s priority list.
"School discipline has been a huge issue with school groups and parents and it has been re-enforced by the fact that it has been brought up so much," Woods said, referring to a series of meetings that Superintendent Cheryl Atkinson has been having throughout the district. "We are going to have to take a serious look at it."
Recently, the district announced the hiring of Ralph Taylor as a director of school discipline and student relations. Taylor, the executive director of alternative education and safe schools at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, is expected to start at the beginning of 2012.
Woods said one student who flooded the bathroom “has been identified and will be disciplined.” He said no students were injured and no suspensions have been handed down yet.
“We do have incidents toward the end of term,” Woods said. “However, any student breaking rules will be dealt with seriously.”
Brown, who said his son witnessed the food fight in the cafeteria, believes the school handled the situation properly. He said he is not worried about his kids or planning to move them out of the school.
“These things happen. Use this as a teaching opportunity for your children,” Brown said. “Have these people ever seen ‘Animal House'?”
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