Texas high school held cage fights, records say

[jimmy olsen]

Damn, that's crazy. How can people let that go on, let alone condone it and not think they're going to get fired once it comes out.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29774152/

Texas high school held cage fights, records say
Staff allegedly staged 'gladiator-style' brawls for troubled students

DALLAS - A Dallas high school staged "gladiator-style" cage fights among troubled students, making them settle their differences with bare-knuckled brawls inside a boys locker room, according to school district documents.

The principal and other employees at South Oak Cliff High School "knew of the practice, allowed it to go on for a time, and failed to report it," according to a 2008 report revealed Thursday. The fights, unleashed inside a steel utility cage, happened between 2003 and 2005, the report said.

The Dallas Morning News obtained the documents for a story in its Thursday editions.

"It was gladiator-style entertainment for the staff," Frank Hammond, a middle school counselor, told the Morning News. Hammond was fired from South Oak Cliff and has filed a whistleblower lawsuit. "They were taking these boys downstairs to fight. And it was sanctioned by the principal and security."

District investigators first learned of the fights during a probe into the school's unauthorized fundraising and grade-changing for athletes that cost the school its 2006 boys state basketball championship, the Dallas Morning News reported.

"The cage" was inside a section of the boys basketball locker room barricaded by wire mesh and metal lockers, according to the report. Security monitors used it to let students settle their differences.

Former Principal Donald Moten denied the allegations, saying he had nothing to comment on because the fights never happened.

"That's barbaric. You can't do that at a high school. You can't do that anywhere," Moten told the Morning News.

Moten resigned during the grade-changing investigation.

District Superintendent Michael Hinojosa, however, confirmed that there were "some things that happened inside of a cage" and said that the fights were "unacceptable," the Dallas newspaper reported. He told the paper that criminal charges were not filed but that "there was discipline taken."

School board members have called for another investigation.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.

[Neil]

School counselors are often full of lies.

[Martinus]

HOTT

[jimmy olsen]

School counselors are often full of lies.

The Superintendent is backing him up.

[FunkMonk]

We had cage fights in our locker rooms all the time. Coaches always broke it up. Eventually.

Those were the days.

[dps]

School counselors are often full of lies.

The Superintendent is backing him up.

The superintendent said that something happened.  That falls short of backing up the claim that the fights were sanctioned by the principal and security, or that they were staged for the entertainment of the staff.

[Syt]