Violence in Evanston

A freshman girl was raped on a third-floor stair landing during orientation week last summer. Once classes started, a home-economics teacher and a Russian teacher were attacked by students. A school accountant was robbed. Throughout the year the school was plagued by arson, larceny and vandalism. Security officers were called almost daily to break up fights or investigate thefts.

The setting for this crime wave is not an inner-city blackboard jungle but suburban Evanston Township High School on Chicago's elm-shaded, affluent North Shore. For years the high school has been known as one of the best in the nation, and it still earns that reputation. The current senior class has nine Merit Scholars, the largest number in the school's 92-year history. Evanston's innovative curriculum offers 260 courses and programs; the campus includes a planetarium and television studio.

100 Murders. But Evanston, like many other previously tranquil schools, has fallen victim to a rising tide of school violence across the nation. This spring a Senate subcommittee on juvenile delinquency reported that there are now more than 100 murders in public schools each year, and 70,000 assaults on teachers. It estimated that school vandalism costs $500 million a year--about the amount that is spent on textbooks.

While Evanston's violence does not begin to match that in many of the high schools in neighboring Chicago or other big cities, it threatens to erode the quality of the education available to the school's 4,700 students. The music department had to curtail some of its independent study programs after someone stole the recording equipment. Business classes were hampered this spring by the theft of 13 typewriters and calculators. The daily schedule was revised to cut back on students' free time. Rest rooms on the third floor were closed after they became hangouts. As a result of attacks and threats, students have become wary. "There is a degree of fear," says Senior Dan Graff. "If you see a bunch of guys in the hall, you get nervous. You might get held up." Says School Community Worker John Ingram: "We've had everything conceivable happen here but murder."

It would be simple to blame the school's problems on integration. Black students make up 23% of the enrollment and commit a disproportionate share of the violence. But Evanston Township High School has always been integrated. In 1963, for example, when 18% of the students were black, there were few problems and there was need for only one daytime security guard. This year, by contrast, the school is spending nearly $160,000 for security, money that otherwise would go for education. The exit doors bristle with electronic locks. Eight plainclothes officers with two-way radios patrol the halls, while off-duty city police monitor the 55-acre campus. Next fall four special-police youth officers will be assigned to E.T.H.S. full time. Says Senior Michael Crooks: "I feel like I'm in a prison."

What has caused the shift to violence in Evanston and other U.S. schools? A number of Evanston parents blame the high school for not enforcing discipline and punishing offenders. "They're hushing things up," says Mrs. Winston Hough, who has two children in the school. "They're afraid it will reflect badly on their image." School officials blame an atmosphere of permissiveness in the home and a lack of respect for authority. "Some of the students simply don't feel that the punishment is great enough to deter them," says Security Chief Richard Goggins. "They have little fear of suspension. They're willing to take the risk."

Assault Charge. Evanston School Superintendent David Moberly places some of the blame on the difficulty involved in punishing students: "The whole court process has planted in their minds a 'do what you want' attitude." Furthermore, he says, the court process seems to drag on interminably. The suspect in the rape case, for example, remained in school most of the year awaiting prosecution. In April he was apprehended on an assault charge and he finally dropped out of school while officials were preparing to expel him.

Moberly does concede that the school has not been blameless, and that there has been "a certain laxness" in enforcing rules. Still, at Evanston as at other schools across the country, it is far easier to point to the problem than to deal with its causes. Says Moberly: "We are a reflection of the society that we serve."

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