One Brawl, Among Many, Catches National Eye

At almost precisely the same time the crest of mayhem was rolling through the visitors’ bleachers at McArthur High School in Decatur, Ill.--fists and feet flying, mothers covering their children--another brawl was breaking out in the stands at a high school football game 240 miles away.

Few know of the Sept. 17 fight in Mount Healthy, Ohio, which required the assistance of five police departments and ended with eight teens in handcuffs--or of the numerous other scuffles at high school games across the country.

The nation, however, knows about the melee in Decatur and the ensuing two-year expulsions of seven black students allegedly involved. While that brawl has raised difficult questions about race relations and schools’ “zero-tolerance” policies on violence, the still-unfolding drama also has called into question the roles of powerful out-of-towners and the national media in influencing local decision-making.

The fight, after all, was no longer front-page news--even in the Decatur Herald & Review--until the Rev. Jesse Jackson arrived, joined by Illinois Gov. George Ryan, the state superintendent of schools and dozens of reporters.

And as the story, or at least the coverage of it, grew, the issues of right and wrong, proper punishment and local control became cloudier.

Federal Lawsuit Targets District

What began two months ago as a brief brawl between rival gangs, according to police, has led to a federal lawsuit against the school district. Decatur’s three high schools were closed for three days because of fears of violence. Another rally in support of the accused is planned for Sunday. Still, no final decision has been reached about the academic fate of the seven teens, all of whom face felony charges.

Although the fight in the Cincinnati suburb of Mount Healthy ended in much the same way--with eight youngsters, also all African Americans, in trouble with the law--the atmosphere today is much different, said Police Chief Al Schaefer. Six of the students were given relatively short suspensions, and fines or community service. One, who had previous brushes with the law, is in foster care pending a decision on her education status. Another is serving a sentence in a juvenile facility.

Life in Mount Healthy has long since returned to normal.

“You can argue the punishment of the seven [Decatur] children either way. There are legitimate debates to be had,” said Ken Smithmier, a civic booster and president and CEO of Decatur Memorial Hospital. “But this has gotten so far out of hand. And when our usefulness expires--and I think it’s about to--the famous [visitors] and reporters will go onto the next place and not be held accountable.”

Jackson and his supporters say they came because they were invited and because the seven boys were being punished unfairly and without due process.

“Of course, being the international figure that he is, [Jackson] brought the national media to Decatur, just like Dr. King brought the media to Selma,” said Jackson spokeswoman Stephanie Gadlin. “This is not about the reverend coming and going. . . . It’s about judgment. It’s about the children.”

The fight took place on a warm Friday at the McArthur High stadium.

No one seems to know exactly how it began, although police suspect it was a continuation of a run-in between rival gangs. The brawl flowed along the entire length of the Eisenhower High bleachers before spilling off one end and slowly evaporating.

Similar Incident, Far Different Result

The fight in Mount Healthy was nearly as unnerving. Two boys got into a fistfight beside the bleachers as the local team was creaming rival Taft High on the field. A crowd estimated at 300 gathered. As the two fighters were being pulled apart and handcuffed, another boy reached out and shoved Police Chief Schaefer.

“I grabbed the young man and we went to the ground,” Schaefer said. “Then some of the other kids got involved.”

The Cincinnati Enquirer wrote its one and only story on the fight the next day, a short piece played inside the Metro section. The suspensions and sentences were handled quietly by the school board and juvenile judges.

Back in Decatur, a divided school board with one black member invoked its version of the nationally popular zero-tolerance policy toward violence, voting in the first week of October to throw the book at the students, expelling them for two years.

The decision included a provision that allowed the teens to enroll in alternative education programs and, at the end of this school year, to reapply for admission to Eisenhower.

Families of the boys say they were never informed of those options and were told only that the kids were expelled for two years.

To protest the expulsions, Julius Bailey, a spokesman for the Decatur chapter of Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, began a hunger strike that garnered little attention. National leaders of the Chicago-based group asked Bailey to halt his strike. He did.

On Oct. 12, several people, including Decatur City Councilwoman Betsy Stockard, asked the board to reconsider the length of the expulsions. Stockard, who is black, later changed her mind after seeing a videotape of the fight.

On Oct. 31, Jackson announced that he would travel to Decatur to intervene on the boys’ behalf. He, too, had not yet seen the video and downplayed the altercation as “something silly, like children do.”

After several meetings with Jackson and other supporters of the teens, the school board refused to bend. Last Sunday, Jackson led a protest through the streets of Decatur. Police say 1,200 marched. Rainbow/PUSH members say the number was 5,000.

But as the rhetoric began to cool down, the dispute took several turns.

First, school district officials infuriated supporters--and may have broken the law by revealing confidential information--when they suggested that at least some of the accused were not particularly interested in education before the outsiders came to town. Two were third-year freshmen, it was revealed, another a second-year freshman. Together, the seven teens had missed 350 days of school during their high school careers.

Although nearly two months had passed, prosecutors charged the seven, as well as two other students allegedly involved in the incident, with felony mob activity.

Then the videotape surfaced.

While many supporters were infuriated, calling the mysterious release of the video and the filing of charges part of a smear campaign, others switched sides entirely.

“I realized this was not a simple kids’ fight,” Stockard said. “I had to support their expulsion. This was a horrendous brawl. This was scary.”

Even Jackson’s language began to change. He stopped talking about the fight being less violent than a hockey game and began attacking the broader issue of “zero-tolerance” policies--a tactic many educators welcomed.

The Chicago attorney who filed the federal civil rights suit on behalf of the students began discussing the number of black students expelled and suspended, compared with the number of whites.

And television stations--and some national networks--played and replayed the footage of the stadium brawl.

Elevating a ‘Local Event’

“This was a local dispute at a high school,” said Rob Logan of the Missouri School of Journalism. “To elevate it beyond that is sort of sad--and not a very good commentary on television news, I’m afraid.”

Jackson left town Thursday but plans to return to Decatur on Sunday for another march.

The accused students may be able to attend alternative school, earn credit and then apply for readmission next year under a deal brokered by the governor, although the details are unclear and the decision is not final, and no one seems certain how that differs from the board’s original ruling.

In Mount Healthy on Thursday, Schaefer, who’s been with the Police Department since 1972, said things were pretty quiet--probably not unlike they used to be in Decatur.

“I don’t know why they suspended the kids for two years, but we have a sharp school board here, and I bet they have a sharp school board too,” Schaefer said. “And if all the outsiders would have come down here, I guess we would have had the same situation.”

Times researcher John Beckham contributed to this story.