Twelve Ill. students expelled after fight planned on MySpace

EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. -- A dozen high school students in this St. Louis suburb were expelled for taking part in an in-school brawl that school officials said was arranged on the popular Internet social-networking hub MySpace.com.

On Monday, the school board voted unanimously to expel the Edwardsville High School students -- 11 girls and one boy -- through the end of the school year for their involvement in the Nov. 9 melee. Three were seniors who were barred from participating in graduation ceremonies next spring, superintendent Ed Hightower said Tuesday.

Hightower -- an NCAA basketball referee -- said the board had little choice but to expel the students because school administrators had tried to mediate differences between the two student factions before the melee.

No disrespect

The district also tried to defuse the conflict by having seven of the students agree in writing to stop "disrespecting" each other, keep to themselves and report problems to adults. The students were told they faced police involvement or "exclusion" from the 2,500-student school if they broke the pact.

"There were numerous interventions, numerous opportunities for these students to resolve their differences," but they chose to fight instead, said Hightower, chief of a 7,500-student district where, before Monday, just 21 students have been expelled in the past 11 years.

Madison County prosecutors had charged three of the students -- all 17 or 18 years old -- with felony mob action in the fight, which produced no serious injuries. The cases are pending.

"Any time you remove students from school, it's a difficult decision. We don't take it lightly," Hightower added. "Certainly my heart goes out to the parents who are and were passionate regarding the importance of their children's education. But our No. 1 goal is to provide a safe and orderly environment for all students."

Hightower said administrators learned Oct. 19 that two student factions were squabbling, apparently over who had been invited to -- and left out of -- a certain party.

On Nov. 6, parents of seven of the students accompanied their children to school to sign nonaggression pacts. According to the agreement, the students pledged to stay away from each other, not say anything "disrespectful to each other," "not say anything about each other to other people," and "ignore comments about any of us from any other persons."

"As far was we are concerned, from this point forward, there are no problems, no lies, and no rumors between us," the agreement read.

But just two days later, Hightower said, students posted messages on MySpace.com, finalizing plans to fight the next day. The fight ensued as planned in the high school's commons area, Hightower said.

Nicholee Blockton, who said she told school administrators Nov. 6 that her daughter Whitney and friends were being threatened by the other group, said Whitney was to graduate from the school in about two weeks.

Whitney Blockton's prior troubles at the school were "only for using her cell phone in school, and what high school student hasn't gotten in trouble for that?" Nicholee Blockton told the Belleville News-Democrat.

MySpace.com is grappling with ways to curb the use of the site for such purposes, distributing a guide for school administrators about MySpace and "letting them know that anything that can happen on a school playground also can happen online," MySpace's chief security officer, Hemanshu Nigam, said.