The vast majority North Atlanta student’s hail from Sutton Middle School, our cluster’s primary middle school feeder institution. At Sutton, hall fights are not an uncommon sight. However, at North Atlanta, as some students mature and become young adults, fights do become less common. But sadly fights in the hallways can still be an unfortunate reality for this school’s students

Fights that happen in high school tend to generate more buzz than in middle school. With high schoolers having phones they can access at any time, videos and images of the skirmish can be spread throughout the school in a matter of minutes. Students who engage in fights acknowledge that there are varied reasons for these incidents. They also admit that modern technology and social media worsen the situation. “First I would get mad,” an anonymous student said. “Then we would try to talk things over on Snapchat, which only escalated my anger and made me ready to fight.”

At North Atlanta, the fights appear to be more persistent because of the commotion they cause around the school. Back in the fall, there was a fight outside the cafeteria

During the melee, two boys got into the thick of it and the whole occasion took  multiple staff members to separate the students. Student witnesses were talking about the dustup for days, passing around whatever footage and information they had. Sophomore Elise Roman saw the fight and wonders why people feel the need to settle their scores at school. “Why does anyone fight at school? I feel like there are so many other places they can take out their anger,” said Roman.

After years of experience in high school, most students can sense when a fight is about to happen because the atmosphere of the floor changes. The halls become clamorous with a weird sense of quietness as people crowd around and wait to egg on the combatants. Friends whisper to each other about their predictions for the upcoming events. To this end, some students see fighting as a form of entertainment and want to see more fights. However, others are just plain annoyed. “I don’t care why they fight or that they do it at all,” said sophomore Caroline Somoza. “I just wish they would stop making me late to class.”

Agreeably it’s a sad reality that so many view fights as a form of entertainment. In terms of number of incidents in the course of a school year, they are actually rather statistically rare. But as fights at school are for some students, they give our measurably fantastic school a bad rep.

Fights are rare and the grand preponderance of North Atlanta students never involve themselves in them. But they do remain a sad — if not telling — indicator that this remains a occasionally overly interesting public school. And that could be a reality that this school will be fighting for years to come.