Editor’s Note: All names in this interview have been changed to preserve the anonymity of interviewees.
Accepted student days are an opportunity to explore different colleges, but also an opportunity to meet people from all over the US, and even from all over the world. At a recent visit to Earlham College in Indiana, I met Jason Clarson*, a student from a small town in Texas on the border with Oklahoma. I love to hear about different life experiences, and Jason definitely has an interesting story! He graciously agreed to be interviewed over the phone for The Tattler, along with his friend who joined later in the conversation. The interview below covers many topics, ranging from increases in gun violence to the dress code to racism.
Thea Clarkberg ’18: I just have a couple questions for an article in my school newspaper.
Jason Clarson ’18: Cool. Our school doesn’t have a newspaper. The journalism team goes around and films a bunch of silly stuff and puts a video out every week. They just film people in the hallways and at lunch and stuff. They used to go into the classrooms and do interviews with teachers, but the principal banned them from going into the classrooms. He said it was a distraction.
TC: What are some of the other rules you have at your school?
JC: I’ll start with clothing rules. You can’t have any holes or frays in jeans or any clothing. Girls can’t have shorts or skirts shorter than a dollar above the knee. They get a dollar and check if it’s too high. You can’t have any hats or sunglasses in the building, or even outside on the campus. You can’t have earbuds or headphones. The principal will come around and take them.
TC: Would you say that it’s mostly girls who get “dress-coded,” or is it also guys?
JC: It’s mostly girls. Guys will go around wearing shorts, like booty shorts, like track shorts, and they don’t bat an eye.
TC: What happens when they get dress-coded?
JC: They get taken to the principal’s office and you can call your parents and get a change of clothes or you can put on sweatpants. Or they get three days of DMC, which is our in-school suspension. You can’t have any suggestive clothes on at all. You’ll get dress-coded.
TC: What do you mean by “suggestive clothing”?
JC: If they think it’s distracting or suggesting smoking or drinking in any way. Even if you are wearing Rastafarian colors, like red, yellow, and green, you’ll get dress-coded. I’ve had that happen.
You have to be in your classroom after passing period or you’ll get DMC. You can’t let anyone inside the building during the school day. There’s a rule where you have to call the principal Dr. Beezel*. Even if you’re a new student and you don’t know he’s a doctor, and you call him Mr., he’ll give you DMC. He even gets mad at parents if they call him Mr. Beezel instead of Dr. Beezel.
TC: You mentioned that you aren’t allowed to let people in during the school day. Is that a reaction to recent gun violence in schools?
JC: Yeah, there have been kids who’ve brought guns to school. It didn’t happen in my freshman year, but in my sophomore year, the SRO’s, the school cops, looked in someone’s car, and they saw an empty shotgun shell. That was ridiculous. He was sent to “Pathways” for like a whole month. [Pathway is] our alternative school, for people who bring drugs to school, people who get in fights, and people who get pregnant. They get sent to Pathways.
In my sophomore year, there was a bomb threat. Someone had written on the walls in the bathroom that they had a bomb that they were going to blow up between third and fourth period and they didn’t even put the school in lockdown. They just brought in three more police officers and that was it. So a bunch of kids told their parents because word got out. But the school sent out a message that there was no bomb, even though there was no proof that there was no bomb.
In my junior year, gun violence really started to escalate. It got worse and worse. That year we had two kids who brought guns to school. They’d bring a pistol in their backpack, and they’d get caught with it, and all they would do is get DMC for like a week and the SRO’s wouldn’t even check their backpacks when they got to school. They just didn’t really do anything about it, which was really frustrating for a lot of people. That’s a federal offense to bring a gun to school.
This year, it’s been pretty bad. A kid was in class and told his friend that he had a gun in his backpack and was going to shoot up all the popular kids and the freshmen. The friend told the teacher and the teacher told the SRO’s, so about six police officers came into the classroom and started searching the kid’s bag and they pulled out a gun and everyone in the classroom saw that there was a gun. They put the gun back in the backpack and took the kid away. The school sent out a message that there was no gun and no shooting threat, even though everyone saw the gun and heard that the kid was going to shoot up the school. So they were hiding that there was a shooting threat.
TC: Is there a lot of paranoia from the students? Are people afraid?
JC: Yeah. It’s weird at our school because everyone knows in the back of their head that something could happen. Every time in the cafeteria if someone drops a tray or makes a loud noise, everyone gets super quiet and looks over there. They’re waiting for the second “bang.” They hear one, and they think, “Uh-oh.” Everyone’s paranoid in the back of their head, but at the same time everyone is joking about it.
TC: Why has there been an increase lately in people bringing guns to school?
JC: I think it’s just because of all the shootings that have happened, and younger kids are being exposed to it more and more so they think it’s not taboo. It’s something that could happen.
There are groups of friends at school that actively talk about how they want to shoot up the school and they always have plans and stuff. They’ll talk about it at school but they don’t get in trouble for it. They’ll just say that they’re joking.
TC: You mentioned Pathways, the alternative school. Could you talk about that a little bit more?
JC’s Friend: If you get sent to Pathways, you study at your own pace. You can get your work done at whatever time they want. Some kids graduate as sophomores. The kids who get sent there for drugs or fighting usually don’t do that. They are just there to have more security, I guess. Whenever they walk in every day, they can’t have any sort of phones or watches or anything metal on them.
JC: Oh yeah. They get metal detector-ed.
JC’s Friend: They get a pat-down, and if they bring anything there, they get actual jail time. . . . It’s not even a real school. It’s basically a house right next to our town stadium that they renovated into a “school.”
TC: This is a bit of a sensitive topic, but I was wondering if there are ever race issues at your school.
JC’s Friend: Dr. Beezel is way harsher on black students than he is on the white students who talk about shooting up the school.
JC: A lot of the kids at the school are kind of racist because it’s just the atmosphere that’s there. People are just talking to their friends about it. There’ll be a white kid, and some black kid will bump into them in the hallway, and the white kid will go to his friends and start talking and other people will start b*tching and stuff. Even if kids aren’t hatred racist, they’re uncomfortable racists.
TC: What do you mean “hatred racist”?
JC: Like white supremacists. They hate other races. I know this one kid from my sophomore year in my algebra class and every day for the first fifteen minutes of class he would go on a rant about he can’t stand “n-words.” People openly make racist jokes, and everyone in the class will laugh.
TC: What is the response of the teachers and administration?
JC: A lot of them laugh at the jokes. They don’t enforce anything.
I’d say about 95 percent of the school is Christian, because this is an entire Christian town. We have a church on every street corner and there are no other mosques or synagogues. They’ll be super homophobic, and anyone who is openly gay will be scrutinized by everyone. We have this friend named John*, who is openly gay, and everyone will make jokes towards him and call him a f*g and stuff. There will be kids who will tell him he is going to hell and try to convert him or something.
TC: Would you say there is a lot of bullying?
JC: Oh yeah, but the principal always puts it off as drama.
TC: Even physical violence?
JC: If it’s physical violence and they see it, then they’ll do something, but if they don’t see it they don’t see anything. All the athletic popular kids are the favorites of the principal, so if an athletic kid is bullying someone, they won’t get in trouble unless he sees it. And anything that is verbal is just put off as drama immediately no matter what, even if it’s open racism. The kid from algebra is also in band, and for the first time ever he had a black kid in his section, and he was openly making racist jokes and taunting the black kid to the saxophone section.
JC’s Friend: Yeah, she started crying because he was being racist and then the director got mad at her for crying and put it off as her being sensitive.
JC: She went and told the directors but they didn’t do anything.
TC: Tell me more about the SRO’s, the school cops.
JC: There are two. One is a retired cop, and he’s a good guy. He patrols the school and makes sure there is nothing going on. The other dude was a security officer at a supermarket or something but he sure does treat himself as a cop. He patrols the outside of the school. He gets in his golf cart and patrols all around the parking lots and makes sure everyone has a parking sticker. He locks the gate so you can’t leave. He’ll watch at the bottom of the hill and make sure no one is speeding.
TC: What kinds of clubs do you have at the school?
JC: Since everyone is Christian we don’t have anything except FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes), FCM (Fellowship of Christian Musicians), and the Fellowship of Christian Dancers. There’s a robotics club, but it’s a class as well. There’s a Spanish club but they just have siestas. There’s Science Club, and Art Club. That’s about it.
TC: What do you do after school usually?
JC: Our school is very clique-based. All the athletic kids go to parties and drink and smoke and stuff, and all the band kids don’t really do anything because we’re all geeky band kids. The rest just hang out with their own little group. There aren’t really after-school activities. They make you get out of the school after school is over. If you’re caught in the school, you’ll get DMC.
TC: What is one thing that you want Ithacans to know about your school? What are some positive things about your school?
JC: Well, it’s very stereotypical. They wear cowboy boots and Confederate attire. They do whatever they can to show that they are a flaming racist. The only positive thing about our school is some of the people. There are good teachers here. Many of them are bad, but some are good. I don’t know why you would want to go to our high school, but if you do, just join the band. Don’t join any of the other stuff because those are full of racist and super evangelical kids. I would recommend going to a high school south of here. It’s so much better.
TC: So you’re going to Earlham College in Indiana next year! Do you have any expectations or fears?
JC: I don’t know what I’m exactly expecting, but I’ve got an idea. It’s supposed to be very different and more liberal arts. I basically just want to get away from this town.
TC: It will definitely be different! Hope to see you there in the fall. Thanks for talking with me!
*Names have been changed.