a tree by the building so that I could observe what happened during break without imposing on students while they socialized with their friends. When I was outside some of the students I worked with or had gotten to know would often come up to me and talk for a while before going back in for class. However, now when they did this one of the probation officers or staff members would step in and tell them to move along, sending them back to their table. Consequently, policing the students’ access to the shade became a way for staff to keep students at their appropriate tables and on their designated side of the divided blacktop.
During one of these lunch breaks, I sat with Ben, one of my regular students, while he complained that he had to stay after school to help clean up the yard as punishment for getting to school late this morning. He explained, “It’s not even hard work or anything, it’s just hella hot.”
“Yeah, and they won’t even let you guys in the shade anymore huh?” I responded, referring to the staff moving the tables away from the trees.
“Naw, it was cuz we were all chillin’ here, and kids from the other side started coming over, started sitting in the shade.”
“Were they scared something was gonna happen?”
“I dunno, probably. They probably thought there’d be fights, like different gangs would both be in the shade and they’d get into a fight, cuz this is like the only place there’s shade.”
One of the POs supervising lunch spots us and walks over. She says hi to me and walks around the bench to stand directly behind Ben, putting her hands on the top of the seatback and leaning forward over him. “Get off the bench.”
“What?” Ben asks incredulously, looking back up at her.
She replies calmly: “You know you’re not supposed to be sitting here. I’m not calling you out, it looks like you got up on your own.” Ben rolls his eyes, stands up, and goes back to sitting with his friends. I ask her why students can’t sit here, and she answers: “They can stop and talk for a few minutes, but then they try to play it off like ‘Oh I’m just talking to him.’ So just so no one gets hurt feelings, just move them along.”
As Ben’s comments indicate, students understood that the school’s attempts to restrict their access to shade intended to keep them separated. Probation officers shooed students out of shade anytime they tried to linger under the trees, arguing that if some of the youth could not have access to shade then none of them should. While staff members felt this kept things fair between students, it functioned to maintain divisions between youth because kicking them out of the shade inevitably entailed sending them back to their designated tables.
The school’s staff also reinforced divisions between students by policing the boundaries between groups and directing youth who crossed these boundaries to “stay with their side.” Probation and security staff members restricted students to one side of the blacktop in order to prevent gang members from crossing sides and starting fights with rivals. However, uncertainty about which students were actually gang members exposed almost all of the students to these same restrictions. When Rafael, an unaffiliated tagger, went to talk with a friend of his who had just come to the school, he sat with her on one of the tables furthest from the building. The security guard calls for these tables to use the restroom if they need to and Rafael, who usually sits with the Bulldogs on the tables closest to the school building, gets up from the table and starts walking inside. One of the probation officers supervising the break calls after him:
“Rafael! Where are you going?”
“They called bathroom.”
“Aren’t you on this side?” She asks, pointing to the tables closest to the school building.
“I was sitting over there.” He counters, pointing back to the opposite side.
“Don’t be switching sides! If you’re gonna be on that side, you stay on that side!”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, serious. If you gonna go to the bathroom you go when your side is called.”
The probation officer scolds Rafael for not remaining on the side that he usually sits on because his presence on the far tables violates the strict division of physical space. Even though Rafael is not a gang member, staff sees his presence on the “Norteña/o side” as a potential security threat because they associate him with the Bulldogs he usually sits with. To avoid this risk they reprimand him and tell him to “stay on his side,” enforcing the division of students into gang-associated groups. In doing so, the school ascribes gang labels onto students and blurs its ability to distinguish between gang members who may start fights and unaffiliated students.6
The restrooms the students used during breaks were seen as especially vulnerable sites for fighting, making it particularly important for the staff to keep students separated as they came inside to go to the bathroom. Later in the week I sit with Ben again during break, and we watch another student try to head in to use the bathroom out of turn, only to be sent back when the PO yells at him “I didn’t call your side!” We laugh and I say to Ben, “Damn they’re serious about the sides huh?”
Ben smirks and nods, “Yeah.” I tell him about the PO scolding Rafael for switching sides a few days ago, and he explains why they’re so strict about keeping students separated during bathroom breaks: “It’s cuz they don’t want someone sneakin’ over here and then goin’ into the bathroom where they can fight, cuz out here it’ll probably get broken up quick, but in there you could probably fight for longer.”
These efforts to keep students separated in the name of preventing fights extended into where they did their schoolwork as well. Students were not divided in the classroom or split into different classes, but some staff members were concerned about keeping the students that I took out away from potential rivals. The school’s RSP (Resource Specialist Program) teacher and I both pulled students out of their regular classes and worked with them in small groups at the opposite ends of a large room. One day the vice principal, Mrs. Garcia, calls us both into her office. I come in and sit down, and while waiting for the RSP teacher to join us I ask Mrs. Garcia “Is something wrong?”
“Well there’s some concern about you taking out kids from different gangs.”
“Oh, did something happen?”
“This morning there was an incident that was an extension of something [that happened] yesterday after school, so I’ve already suspended 3 students this morning over that. So things are a little tense right now. Our staff has noticed it and asked that I talk with you, because you tend to pull out more Bulldog affiliates, and she gets the few Norteño and Sureño students, and they’re too close to each other. There hasn’t been a problem yet, but the looks have started. It’s all in the body language. And cuz you’re way in the front [of the building], I’m concerned that if there was a problem it would take security a minute to get there, and by then someone could really get hurt.”
As Mrs. Ruiz, the RSP teacher, comes in Mrs. Garcia repeats her concerns to her and goes on to say that she wants us to start working with our students in separate rooms, telling me to use the conference room from now on. Mrs. Ruiz and I look at each other with some confusion, and she turns back to Mrs. Garcia and counters that neither of us have had any problems with our students sharing a room. Indeed, I had never seen either Mrs. Ruiz’s or my own students do anything to try to start a fight while we had them out, and none of our students were involved in the shouting match/verbal provocations that resulted in that morning’s three suspensions. Mrs. Garcia simply responds: “Our staff knows who these kids are and they’ve seen the stares and the
