Not Just Northern

I was shocked to hear about a stabbing that ocurred Thursday at my old high school, Northern. When I was there, we had fights and bomb threats but no stabbings. However, I was even more shocked by the WRAL story about the incident. Here is the gist of the story: a fight broke out between students at NHS before school started.

One was stabbed and taken to the hospital while the other was arrested. WRAL then goes on to report the number of crimes at Northern and takes it upon themselves to mention how many were drug and firearm-related incidents and how many were sexual assault incidents.

I am upset that this ocurred but I am even more upset at WRAL for creating this story that did not represent the school well at all. In my opinion, this is the poorest showing of journalism I have ever seen from WRAL. They included statistics about Northern but failed to compare them to other schools in the system. For instance, they said that Northern "accounted for nearly 1/5th of the 284 crimes and acts of violence reported in Durham schools in the 2009-10 school year." They go on to say that, "42 of the 56 incidents reported at Northern High were drug-related, while nine involved possession of firearms or other weapons, a sexual assault, and three other assaults." The stats may be true but the parts about drug-related and sexual assault crimes are irrelevant to the case presented.

The bottom line here is that Northern should not be singled out everytime something happens. It was important that the public knew of this incident, but why not do the same for other schools in the district? I decided to do my own digging and found that, according to the State Department of Public Instruction, Riverside High School had the second highest number of crimes in the 2009-2010 school year (40 total). You didn't hear about that did you? If I had written the story for WRAL, I would use it as a warning to all parents at all high schools and not just pick out Northern or DPS. I would have included a distribution of the crime reports and address this as a problem in all schools, not just Northern. I think WRAL showed poor professionalism and poor judgement when writing this story. I have always trusted them for their news but, after seeing this story, I may not have that much of a favorable opinion for them anymore.

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