Do a search for school violence on Google News and the number of results, which span the continental United States, is disheartening. The history of school violence begins for most Americans with Columbine and is bracketed by the deaths at Virginia Tech. In recent days, reports of continuing violence involving Chicago school children highlight the important fact that guns are only part of the whole picture. Issues like drugs, poverty, truancy, and gangs also are also contributing factors.
In Buffalo, the city and the community have been targeting one specific factor: gangs. About 2 years ago, the Alliance for Quality Education (AQE) conducted a series of approximately 200 surveys that tabulated the communities most pressing concerns. School safety and violence topped the list. Within the past few years, about 34 of the roughly 60 schools that are part of Buffalo’s urban school district have instituted a dress code in an attempt to minimize gang instigated violence. The district has come to find that a disparate institution of a dress code policy has only made students easier targets of gang violence since students are now more easily identified by their school colors.
In response, the Alliance for Quality Education has been leading a movement to implement a district-wide universal dress code. Some opponents of a dress code lament the loss of individual choice, but AQE hopes that students will be able to design the uniform as part of the implementation process. Further stipulations include the election of student enforcers and a different color set for males and females. The hope is that such stipulations will help to gain the students’ support and will result in their signing a 2-year contract.
AQE now has about 1,500 supporters of this cause, which include school board members, and hopes to recruit 10,000 members of the community to sign a petition by the end of the current school year.
Click here to sign the petition.