In 1968, Karen, my wife and I were teaching in Racine, Wisconsin. I was teaching at J.I. Case High School, a pilot school for desegregating all of the high schools in the Racine Unified School District. Karen was teaching at Park High School in Racine. Both schools had substantial populations of students of color.

On a fairly regular basis there were tensions in the hallways of Case, largely around name-calling between white and African-American students. The tensions sometimes led to pushing and shoving and sometimes fights. 

What intrigued Karen and I was how much concern there was about fights and tensions between black and white students, as opposed to the fights that were not unusual among white students. Our experience 50 years ago was that the level of concern was driven by perceptions of black boys and girls being involved in the fights at Case, just as it was at New London High School two weeks ago.

Our major concern in working with students at Case was to enhance student survival skills through which they could address their anger, do well academically and avoid being suspended or expelled.

I could not help but remember those times in 1968 as I listened to people talk about the fight that occurred at the New London High School/Hillhouse football game. My first thought was would there have been as much concern had there been a fight between high school athletes in Killingly and Plainfield? Likely not.

There are several issues at stake here. What happens when we place any students on a field in a game of controlled violence? To what extent do students have a language for expressing or channeling their anger or any emotion? Have we taught young people how to address conflicts? Do we have unstated assumptions about the fights that occur among students of color vs. among white students, or white and students of color? Do we think that fights that occur among students of color are more dangerous? If so, why?

Over the past 50 years, my experience tells me that we have only begun to address these issues.

Do we have the same kind of community-focused anguish about young people dying from opioid overdoses, or bullying, or suicides in Waterford, East Lyme and Old Lyme as we did with the fight in New London? No, for most, the answer is that those deaths and events are seen as a personal tragedy for those students and their families, not for the town.

Having worked with students in different capacities from New London and other towns and cities over the past nine years, Karen and I have what might be a useful guide in moving forward.

Students in suburban towns or urban centers fight for similar reasons. They get angry with each other. Boys may feel that their masculinity is threatened or challenged, they may feel that their relationship with a member of the opposite sex is threatened. For some they have reached the limit of parental pressure to succeed academically or athletically, to get into the right college. Other students have reached their limit of coping with dysfunctional behavior among their parents or guardians. Frankly, for a number of students, it is amazing that they get to school given the dysfunctionality in their homes, or what they see in the way of substance abuse. Some angry students become violent, some turn to alcohol or drugs.

What does this all say? We need to pay more attention to the lives of students, no matter where they live. Students from New London are no more dangerous than those from Colchester, Killingly, Old Lyme, Madison, Groton, Stonington or Clinton. Each community has their fair share of students doing very well and those for whom it is a feat to come to school every day.

The fight in New London at the football game was just that, a fight. The coaches and principal did an outstanding job of addressing students about unacceptable violence and their high expectations for student behavior and performance on and off the field, as they had before the fight happened.

We all need to step back and take a look at our biases and assumptions.

Nick Fischer is the former superintendent of schools for New London, where he lives.