School Officials React to Last Week's Fight - Beckley, Bluefield & Lewisburg News, Weather, Sports

A fight resulting in a hospital trip last week at Woodrow Wilson High School leaving parents concerned about safety in area schools.

Woodrow Wilson Assistant Principal Evert Mills said, "We've had some fights here at Woodrow, no doubt about that, but I think a lot of it has gotten blown out of proportion."

And by that, Assistant Principal Evert Mills means gossip, rumors, and the surge of students using cell phones all day at school.

Mills said, "Where did this come from? Well so-and-so text ed so-and-so and so-and-so text ed her mother and they called me. Put your cell phones away and stop listening to all that!"

A fight last Thursday sent one student to the hospital and Principal Mills says administrators have come together to try and put a stop to the bullying and fighting at Woodrow.

Raleigh County has police officers in every school, but administrators say that's not going to completely stop the problem.

Mills said, "People say well what are you doing to keep them from fighting, it doesn't matter how many people you have out there supervising. If two kids want to fight, they're going to fight."

Last week's fight resulted in a student being pushed through a plate glass window. Administrators say they are now looking into replacing that glass with a newer, safer, material.

While there are things the school is working to change to make it safer, they say students need to speak up about being bullied, or it's not going to go away.

Mills said, "They'll go home and tell their parents they're getting bullied, but they don't come in and say okay my guidance counselor I need to talk to you so-and-so is bothering me. They don't do that they go home and tell the parents and the parents say why don't you do something about it."

This incident was actually the second event at Woodrow Wilson in the past few weeks, the first one involved a student bringing a gun to a football game.

Since that, they have stepped up security at the games checking peoples bags as they came in this past weekend.