YouTube takes down video of fighting Nanaimo girls
Other girls fights are still on YouTube. Do you want to enjoy them. I personally do not want.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hW-BHESgCfA
A video made by Grade 8 students of a fight between two teenaged girls in Nanaimo has been pulled from YouTube. The clip showed two girls punching and wrestling while several dozen teens cheered them on. Nanaimo-Ladysmith School Board chair Jamie Brennan said its should be expected that kids use technology when fights break out. He said, “Youth’s access to the latest technology and the ability to film these kinds of actions and then send them off to the internet sites such as YouTube, you know it shouldn’t be a surprise to people because kids know the technology better than us.”Brennan said teachers are going to sit down with the students and their parents to get them understand the fallout from the fight.
School district chairman Jamie Brennan was not surprised the fight wound up on the Internet.
“It’s not a shock,” Brennan said. “Kids have access to the technology.”
He said the “mob frenzy” that surrounded the fight is unacceptable.
“We want students to be able to resolve conflict non-violently and to work things out,” he said.
The footage was viewed thousands of times.
In North Bay, Ont., a similar incident has led to a father demanding that schools ban video cameras and cellphones with cameras.
The father said the incident made him “sick” and he predicted there will be other fights until schools ban video cameras and cellphones.
The 26-second video clip, which has since been removed from the video-sharing website, showed his daughter hitting another girl while other students encouraged her.
Police did not lay charges and the school board has blocked access to the site on school computers.
The fact the fights are taped and posted on the Internet are very much intertwined.
The audience is a large part of the appeal for the perpetrators of these videos, Raymond Corrado, a criminology professor at Simon Fraser University, said recently.
“Within their peer group, it’s a record of violence. It’s a record of intimidation and, in their mind, the bullies see that as another way of enhancing their reputation,” Corrado said. “That’s enormously enticing for these kids to think that they have a national reputation . . . as being tough.”
The fact that it has been posted on the Internet also speaks to youth’s sense of invincibility, he added.
“That goes to show you how little these teenagers really do think about consequences. If they’re on videotape, there’s no issue as to who did what in terms of police charges.”
