(October 5, 2007) — Where should I sit? Every single Clark student was asking themselves this question on the first day of the new school year, but for no one was this question more important than for the incoming freshmen. Where can they sit? Can they sit with the seniors on the tables in the covered area on the top of the amphitheater? Should they wait until everyone else has found a place? Even though students can sit almost anywhere, there are some areas where it is mostly consists of one grade. Assistant principal Kristina Provost said that during her nine-year teaching experience here, seniors and juniors usually can be found at the top of the amphitheater. Seniors are usually on the left side of the Panther Pit and juniors are on the right side. Outside biology teacher Virginia Benzer’s room, freshmen and sophomores sit on the amphitheater steps and the covered areas outside the auditeria. Despite the “seating arrangements” at Clark, it is not unusual to fi nd students from one grade hanging with students from another grade. Freshmen sit at a “senior table” whether they converse with the upperclassmen or not. Students mingle with all the other grades even if they are freshmen and seniors, which is what happened for freshmen Arsen Pirijanyan and Yura Babalargan. “The table we stay on is a senior table and they let us use it,” Pirijanyan said. Provost said that this was a tradition at Clark. “When Clark fi rst opened we only had two classes – freshmen and sophomore – and they started together, so no one really knew who a freshman was and who a sophomore was because they all started as one group. So it was really nice, and I think the tradition sort of carried over – that we are one group of students, not necessarily four distinctly separate.” Sadly, students are not as tolerant everywhere in our country. One year ago, various racial incidents happened in the town of Jena, Louisiana where an African American student asked the principal if he could sit under a tree where white kids sat. This led to some white students hanging nooses in a tree and various fi ghts that continued for the next two months. Provost said that there is no chance of racial tensions like those in Jena happening here. She said that because Clark is located in California, which has always been very abiding for different cultures, there is less interracial tension.
Territorial behavior occurring at Clark
February 13, 2009
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