Shocking student fight captured on video

by Jolene Toves

Guam - In the era of social media, graphic fights are nothing new, even out here in a community where everyone knows everyone else. But in less than the time of an average commercial, a brutal depiction of a fight involving high school students has captured the community's attention - for its shocking revelation of what was allowed to happen at a public school campus.

Tuesday morning another act of violence in our public schools was caught on video. In sixteen seconds the horrific act depicts a group of students engaging in a fight which could have ended with severe injuries. Denise Hertslet not only has a child attending Tiyan High School, but is also an active member of the school's parent teacher organization and told KUAM News, "I was appalled by what I saw - I was, very disturbed and very concerned about the students that were involved. I'm worried for some of them; I hope they were able to seek medical care because it was that bad."

Department of Education deputy superintendent Rob Malay says every incident is of serious nature because all can have horrible outcomes and each incident is investigated with the same tenacity, adding, "When you review that video, you'll see that it appeared to happen rather quickly so individual school aide assigned to that area may not have been in that position when it happened and that could have been planned and that could have been timed accordingly." Malay says every incident is of serious nature because all can have horrible outcomes and each incident is investigated with the same tenacity

"To make sure that we understand what happened who is involved and take whatever action that we need to within our policies," he said.

But Malay says these incidents are not a result of lack of supervision, adding, "All hands that are available are out in the hallways to monitor student behavior during passing time during break time during lunch time in the cafeteria in the hallways where students are allowed to be at and they do establish off limit areas so that students are not going places where they are going to be unsupervised."

As the school is investigating all angles to see how they can better address situations like this, Malay says they are seeking the help of community partners to teach our students that violence is never the answer. Malay and Hertslet also agree that parents have the responsibility to instill good character in their children and become actively involved.

Malay said, "What we want to do is sit down with the parent leadership groups from some of the schools and see what we can do to more proactively put the positive message out there that look these behaviors are not acceptable they are not acceptable in our home in our schools in our island we want to promote a safer Guam."

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