Berkeley High teens: too close for comfort?
A friend was complaining the other day about the experience of being in downtown Berkeley at lunchtime. It’s a madhouse with all those students milling about, she said. “And some of them are really not that attractive.”
Now, having a son who attends Berkeley High, and is of course very attractive, my immediate reaction was to go on the defensive. However I admit I have never actually experienced the lunchtime rush — I do know around 3,000 teenagers need to find a place to buy lunch and be back in their classrooms in about 40 minutes.
And I can appreciate that having huge numbers of big — for they are invariably big — possibly unruly, teenagers bearing down on you when you are just popping into town to get a replacement battery for your camcorder at RadioShack might be intimidating and a tad unpleasant.
But Berkeley High has been at its current location for 108 years. (The first public high school classes in Berkeley were held in 1880 at the Kellogg Primary School at Oxford and Center Streets adjacent to the campus. In 1901, construction began on the northwest portion of the present site of the high school.)
If anything, the rest of downtown has evolved around it and the UC campus. And, I ask myself, is it not healthy for educational establishments to be at the heart of cities? Or should they be banished to the outskirts so good citizens don’t need to encounter teen spirit up close and en masse on a daily basis?
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Whoa, he’s in high school now? How time flies!
When I worked in Downtown Berkeley, I just tried to avoid leaving the office at Berkeley High lunchtime to avoid lines…
It is a good thing that Berkeley High is in the midst of the city as is Cal. High school is a difficult time. We need to treat these kids as a welcome part of the community rather than as annoying (and evidently, to some, unattractive) interlopers in regular life. We need more exchanges between kids and adults not fewer. Avoid the area for practical reasons if you are in a rush, but otherwise dive in and enjoy the energy and exchange. And, the kids in this picture look quite handsome to me.
+1 on what Kcecelia posted.
Current BHS parent (twice over), long-time Berkeley resident. Over the years, I’ve gotten used to the BHS daily pulse: Avoid Milvia in the morning, don’t take an AC Transit bus down Shattuck around 8am, and don’t try to grab a slice of pizza or a bagel during the lunch break.
But these are generally good kids; I’ve never had a serious problem, other than the crowds. It’s no more inconvenient than rush hour.
Plus: Football on Friday nights, great student-produced plays and music, a young, enthusiastic volunteer and work force, and a regular reminder of what that age felt like.
Probably best that the students don’t get to comment on the attractiveness of the adults!
As nearly as I can tell from looking at things, quite a few of the businesses downtown would be out of business if the BHS students weren’t there.
-t
+2 on what Kcecelia posted.
What about all those horrible crowds of business people in downtown SF at lunchtime? It’s hard to get a bit to eat without having to listen to them chatting away on their cell phones making the lines way too long and too slow.
High school students are one of the few groups that is openly discriminated against. Look at the number of stores with signs that say “Only two high school students at a time” or something similar. What message does this give to students? Imagine the sign saying “No more than two [fill in any ethnic group] people at a time.”
I taught at BHS from ‘96 to ‘04 (and attended there in the 70’s), and think we often send messages to young people that they are “guilty without trial,” and think many people need to lighten up and remember that we were all teenagers once, and many adults at that time thought we were “unruly.”
I think you’ve got it the wrong way around Dave. If you look at most town by-laws that relate to the proximity of other things to schools its usually written as “xxx type of establishment shall not be allowed within y distance of a school”. Its not schools we should be banishing, its those things that encroach on schools (and the young people we as adults should be trying to protect).
Yes, a sudden deluge of teenagers is unpleasant, but so what? Public spaces should be about bringing people from different parts of the community into the same shared space – even if that impinges on the shopping experience. Spatial segregation is still a form of segregation. Berkeley should be happy that it has avoided – to some very small extent – the complete sururbanization of the city that this post invokes: the separation of a diverse public into isolated locations. We should protect and value such public and diverse spaces rather than trying to engineer out that diversity. Who are any of us to try and legislate (figuratively and literally) who should and should not be in public places?
@Lee Trampleasure The “no more than two teens at a time” signs usually go up in response to inventory loss due to shoplifting. Telling a shopkeep in that situation to “lighten up” is the same as telling them to lose a substantial amount of money. Also, in some of those stores – e.g., those that might sell spirits, tobacco, or other dangerous materials, the shopkeep has a legally positive obligation to very carefully limit teen access (an obligation that goes beyond merely checking ids at the counter).
In general, when you define teens as a “group” that is “openly discriminated against” your equivocating between teens with any of the legally or socially recognized “suspect categories” (women, non-whites, non-heterosexuals, etc.). That’s a real stretch. Teens are historically generally not enfranchised or emancipated precisely because in so many areas we hold them to lower standards of behavior and responsibility. We treat their crimes more gently. We delay trusting them with cars or with the vote. We limit their ability to form contracts. We impose curfews. We limit their access to “adult materials”. We do all of those kinds of things in recognition of the fact that, as a rule, they aren’t yet fully developed humans who we can fairly say are as responsible as any adult for their actions. Do you also think that in all of those other ways we “discriminate” against teens?
-t
It strikes me as problematic for an adult (other than the parent) to comment at all on the physical attractiveness of a child. For any adult to comment negatively about the physical attractiveness of a teenager is simply shallow at best and mean-spirited at worst. Teens have enough self-esteem issues to struggle with – let’s not make things worse.
To be fair, when my friend mentioned the unattractiveness of some of the kids she was referring to their behavior not their physical appearance.
attractiveness does not seem like the appropriate criterion, in any case
This is a problematic article “good citizens” “attractive” “intimidating.”
@Thomas Lord
Yes, I do think we discriminate against teens in these areas (remember that numbers of teenagers are now being prosecuted “as adults” for some crimes). That does not necessarily mean we should not. However, I think we need to examine the impact our rules have on them. I guess most of them feel they are being watched throughout their entire time in a store. EZ Stop Deli and Doggie High allow any and all students in. They may lose some to theft, but they have decided that the income from the students (and perhaps less loss due to students appreciating these businesses not banning them) outweighs any theft.
We also get into gray areas where people are not identifiable: When I entered UCB, I looked like I was about 15 or 16. How would a business owner deal with me if s/he told me “you can’t come in here because there’s already two high school students”? I could simply say “No, I’m not a high school student.” As a non-minor, I would not be legally obligated to prove my age/status (e.g. it is fairly commonly understood that the “we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone” signs to not actually allow a business owner to do that).