HENRICO COUNTY, Va. -- The Henrico County School Board is going to revisit a new policy that allows high school students to use their cell phones in the cafeteria and hallway after a massive brawl broke out at Varina High School prompting a lockdown last week.
Cell phone video of the fight spread quickly among students throughout Henrico County.
“They laugh at the people that get beat up,” Davon Smith, a student at Fairfield Middle School, said.
Smith said he watched the video, but it made him uncomfortable because it reminds him of something he would rather forget.
“I`ve gotten beat up before...not funny,” Smith said.
Smith’s mom said she is outraged by the new populating of high school fight videos.
“It`s enough if you get beat up and the people around you see it. It`s embarrassing,” Michelle Smith, said.
CBS 6 uncovered an Instagram page called “Rva_fight” that shows more than 300 videos of local fights.
Smith and her husband said those videos perpetuate fighting.
“The trickle-down effect is kids tend to follow other kids, they think it`s a trendy thing to do,” David Smith, said.
Several other parents echoed those sentiments at a meeting with school and county leaders addressing the fight Sunday evening.
Those concerns prompted the Henrico School Board to consider a change to its cell phone policy.
“It`s unrealistic that we would eliminate them completely, but it is realistic that we would go back to a time when they were off and away throughout the school day,” John Montgomery, the Chairman of the Henrico School Board, said.
Just this year the board opted to allow cell phones to be used in the cafeteria and hallway, but after what happened at Varina, that privilege could be revoked.
“Not only will it encourage kids to fight, but perhaps the kids who are taping it want their fame as well,” Montgomery said about the fight videos.
Montgomery said he does not know if fight videos encourage kids to fight, but he said the fight at Varina had nothing to do with cell phones.
