High school student and teacher on school threat, fights and future

By Sarah Ford | Sonoma Valley Sun

A reference on social media to a March 1 shooting threat at Sonoma Valley High School turned out to be a hoax, but was frightening nonetheless: half the student body stayed home that day.

“That seemed like it knocked the campus into chaos,” said senior Andrew Powers. “Typically you’d expect everything to go back to normal the next week,” but that was not the case. The incident, in which a student who did not make the threat but posted it to social media was arrested, had a destabilizing effect,” agreed SVHS history teacher Craig Tierney.

The hoax and a subsequent rash of on-campus fights were the topic of Powers’ recent discussion with Tierney on a Sonoma Valley High School podcast.

On Tuesday, March 5 there were “about five altercations,” in Tierney’s estimation, and some rock-paper-scissors battles that were misinterpreted as real fights.

Powers and Tierney agreed that the positive, relaxed attitude of the campus police officer helped diffuse the situation. “I’ve seen him break up fights and he’s very smiley,” Powers said. Tierney concurred. “He’s totally positive and neutral. He’s good at de-escalating.”

Powers wondered whether the increased presence of police on campus, prior to and after the shooting threat, escalated the fights. Tierney felt that social media was more the root cause. They agreed that students viewing the Instagram account that posted the fights (since taken down) would be more likely to get involved in fighting.

Powers also wondered whether an administrative response that casts students in a certain role, or expects certain negative behaviors, might make them more likely to engage in that behavior.

Tierney agreed, but added that the SVHS administration doesn’t do that, calling them very “student-centric.” He pointed out that a lot of the more punitive information and handling of altercations happened after the fights occurred. That’s when the administration took a tougher stance in an email that basically said, as Tierney paraphrased, “hey, if you’re fighting, filming, taking part in, or encouraging fights, then we’re going to respond harshly.” After that email was sent, the fights stopped.

Tierney discussed how most SVHS teachers are passionate about their jobs, spending hours trying to prepare engaging lessons. “When we show up and our job is reduced to telling people to stop getting in fist fights, it feels a little degrading, it’s hard.”

He contrasted the recent fights with the protest and so-called “riot” following an unauthorized parking-lot balloon fight amongst seniors several years ago. While he found it “tedious,” the incident provided an opportunity for class discussion of issues which loom large in American history such as protest and civil disobedience. The history teacher concluded that to him the recent fights are just “a bummer.”

“I would love it if the community at large could get a better sense of who our student body is and the challenges we face here,” Tierney said. “Sonoma is an incredibly divided town. The one place we have integration is at the high school” and that’s what makes it difficult and messy, he said, but also unique and valuable. “You have to be here to understand it. We still have two schools, effectively.”

Powers agreed, and Tierney elaborated that part of that was due to academic tracking – there’s the AP (college level classes) set and CP (basic level classes) set and they rarely overlap.

Tierney expressed his feeling that “the biggest problem with the fights is they change the public perception of what a special place this is.”