High School Students Posting Fights On YouTube
It’s a gory video. A YouTube clip uploaded last month shows two young teens circling each other until one punches the other in the face– then blood gushes out out of the boy’s nose.
The fight was captured on cell phone cameras then uploaded on cyberspace. It’s a troubling trend that teens nationwide have adopted. Now, it has surfaced in some borderland high schools.
The latest video involving local teens was shot at a field behind a parking area near Eastwood High School, part of the Ysleta Independent School District.
“At this time we don’t know if they’re students,” said spokeswoman Patricia Ayala.
She said the Eastwood High administrators are reviewing the video and trying to identify the individuals featured in it so as to determine the proper disciplinary action.
“We did not know about this fight at all, it was never reported,” said Ayala. “This (behavior) is not condoned and there will be serious consequences”.
ABC-7 spoke to several Eastwood students during their lunch break Wednesday. They said YouTube fight videos are made on a regular basis off school grounds, but near school property. One student said he uploaded a video depicting two sophomore students fighting on YouTube because other students requested it. When asked, he said he was proud of the amount of views the video had gotten on cyberspace.
“Some students may be doing it now, fighting, for the sake of being videotaped,” said Ayala.
Similar videos have surfaces from other borderland schools, including Socorro High. SISD officials tell ABC-7 the students involved in making those videos, some of which were staged, have been disciplined.
Officials at both YISD and SISD said this kind of viral fight video is not unique to the borderland, but is a national trend that schools throughout the country sometimes struggle to contain.
They said that even though administrators can not ask students to remove violent videos from YouTube or other websites, they can take disciplinary action against students. School officials can punish students involved in making the videos even if they were made off school grounds and after school hours because their behavior violates the student code of conduct.
