I am so appalled, upset and scared for our young people of today. When I was in school in 1978, I got into a fight with another girl over a boy, she thought I was trying to steal from her, basically, she hit me and I went down end of fight. Now, that same girl is married to my cousin and we laugh about this so many years later.

We did not have the Internet, and we definately, did not make everything known to the whole school. Believe me, I love using the Internet, but have to think is the Myspace, Facebook doing any good for these children? They are basically, still children in a world that wants to make them grow up faster than they really should and deal with the "real world".

In business, it can get nasty, but I do not see my competitors in business putting insults on the internet to bring me down. So, my question is what can we do to help the young people of today, control their anger instead of lashing out in such a public way? What ever happened to keep it private?


This article is from the New London Day, today Friday January 18, 2008
"Two teenage girls who had swapped insults on the MySpace social network Web site traded punches in a hallway at Robert E. Fitch Senior High School in Groton last week, resulting in three suspensions, one arrest and a possible civil lawsuit.

Gary Trahan, father of a 16-year-old sophomore who was involved, said he is consulting an attorney because he considers his daughter the victim of a criminal assault rather than a participant in a fight.

Trahan's daughter, who was suspended for 10 days following the Jan. 9 incident, said she was attacked from behind after she turned to walk away from her 15-year-old assailant. School administrators later reduced the suspension to seven days.

Town police charged the 15-year-old freshman with third-degree assault and she, too, was suspended for 10 days. She is scheduled to appear in juvenile court today. Her parents could not be reached to comment Thursday.

A third girl received a five-day suspension for instigating the encounter.

Fitch Principal Robert Bacewicz said the school took the appropriate action.

“We do have a zero-tolerance policy,” said Bacewicz. “We suspend students who get involved in this type of incident. We want to deliver a message that things of this nature are not going to be tolerated at this school.”

But Trahan said the school has victimized his daughter twice and, with final exams coming up, the suspension would hurt her academically. He was at the school Thursday morning, trying to persuade administrators to allow her back to school immediately and to remove the suspension from her permanent record, which he said was unblemished.

“They feel that both of the girls could have gone to the administration (to report a problem), so they're not going to change anything,” Trahan said. “They're just rubber-stamping stuff.”

Trahan said he plans to meet with a lawyer today and that he would be in touch with the Board of Education. He asked that The Day not identify his daughter.

The 16-year-old, interviewed along with her father at their home in the Eastern Point section of Groton Wednesday, still had marks around her left eye a week after the incident. The father, who was called to the school after the fight, said he rushed her to the emergency room when a school nurse told him she might have a detached retina.

Trahan said he was relieved her injuries were not serious. “Lucky the cuts on her face did not need to be sutured, and she will not have any scars,” he said.

The teen said she does not know the 15-year-old freshman well but had exchanged words with her on MySpace and over the phone. She said the girl attacked her from behind and started punching her, even after she told the girl it was not worth getting suspended.

“Can't we let it go?” she said she asked the freshman as they stood face to face against a wall with others watching. She said she turned to walk away when the girl pushed her on the back, spun her around, grabbed her by the hair and “pummeled me.” She said she grabbed the girl's hair and tried to punch her.

“She's pulling me back,” she said. “I hit her two to three times in the side of the head.”

A teacher broke up the fight, she said, and she was taken to the nurse's office. In the bathroom, she saw her swollen face and cuts caused by the other girl's rings and started screaming and swearing. A short time later, the assistant principal told her she was being suspended for 10 days for getting into a fight and not stopping when ordered to do so by a teacher.

“I started crying,” she said.

The teen said she provided a statement to School Resource Officer Kelly Crandall, who took pictures of her injuries. Crandall could not be reached to comment Thursday.

MySpace and similar sites that are wildly popular with young people have spawned several new types of crime. Sexual predators have used the sites to prey on teens, and teens have used the sites as a forum to post video footage of staged street fights.

In Missouri last year, a 13-year-old girl committed suicide after being spurned online by a boy who identified himself as 16-year-old Josh. It was later revealed that “Josh” was the creation of a neighbor whose daughter was fighting with the 13-year-old.

Trahan, a systems analyst, said he does not allow his daughter to use MySpace and similar sites on their home computer.

“I explained to her, if you wouldn't put it on the front page of The Day, you wouldn't put it on the Internet,” he said.

He said he was surprised when a school administrator told him MySpace comments had fueled the Jan. 9 fight, but said his daughter quickly admitted she had gone onto the site at a friend's house and created a profile. After the incident, the teen printed out copies of the MySpace correspondence to show her father.

Egged on by a girl they knew, the freshman and sophomore, who rode the same bus but did not know each other well, had exchanged a series of insults — many of them containing profanities referring to female sexuality.

According to Trahan's daughter, the third girl had fired the opening volley, calling her a “skeet” because she was exchanging cell phone text messages with a senior boy over the recent winter vacation. The 15-year-old, who rides the same bus, chimed in on MySpace and the insults flew.

Bacewicz, the principal, said the school has seen a few incidents involving Web sites like MySpace.

“On the computer, they say a lot of things not facing each other, and when they do come face to face, unfortunately it's at school,” he said. “We try to counsel the kids, when stuff starts happening on the computer, say something to us before something happens. That way we can give them counseling and suggestions.”

Trahan's daughter said administrators told her after the school incident that she should have told them she was having a problem with the freshman. Like other teens, she does not want to be labeled a snitch.

“You don't really tell on someone unless you absolutely have to,” she said. She said the other girl told her earlier that she was going to “beat her” and that she would “dig a hole and bury her,” but that she did not think it would turn physical.

She said staying home has been difficult, especially since all of her friends are at school. She picked up a stack of assignments to complete at home, but she must make up any tests she missed on her first day back. She said she has trouble concentrating on so much schoolwork in an unstructured environment because she suffers from an attention deficit disorder.