Attention all Bearcats!

On the last full day of school, a special street party was planned for you right in the street outside of Battle Creek Central High School. There would have been a DJ playing your favorite songs, and pop and snacks for you to enjoy. Many special guests were planning on attending in order to shake hands with you and say hello, including professional football players (themselves former Bearcats), local elected officials, and members of the media. You might have seen yourself in the paper or on television, celebrating the end of the school year, and the beginning of summer vacation.

The Mayor, Mark Behnke, was going to serve as the host of the Bearcat Block Party, and wish all of you a great summer.

Instead, your school officials decided that “one or two students might rebel against the party and start a fight, and there would be no way for (school officials) to discipline them.” And they made sure that City officials rejected the permit to have the party for that reason.

Your school officials don’t believe in you. They don’t think that you can be trusted to enjoy a party with dignitaries without starting a fight in order to “rebel” against it.

Please thank your principal and the other administrators at Central for preventing an event that could have become a great new end-of-school-year tradition. Go Bearcats!

Laura Adams

UPDATE: In response to a comment from a BCE user

What I don’t understand is that it’s not in keeping with stated school policy “we do not respond to anything that happens outside the building”. They don’t respond to street fights, or assaults or a young man watching the buses load with a gun up his sleeve, so why should they respond to a street party?

When it comes to disciplining students who are fighting, their policy is to have them arrested (I’ve seen that one in action more than once). And, after the bell rings and the school day is over, having students arrested for fighting is the neighborhood’s responsibility.

Their response is just not consistent with their policies.

Which means it is time to dig a little deeper.

Laura Adams