Southern Justice, Texas

Steel Cage Discipline: It Makes Sense In Texas

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This is a very common story about school sanctioned gladiatorial combat among high school boys. The Guardian reports:

Some schools have counsellors to settle disputes between students. But South Oak Cliff high school in Dallas preferred another, more direct method: bare-knuckle fighting inside a steel cage.

According to a 2008 report obtained by the Dallas Morning News, staff at the school sanctioned the use of “the cage” – a section of the boys’ changing room barricaded by wire mesh and steel lockers – to settle disputes and bring unruly students under control.

I fondly remember the day I bludgeoned Vespin the Trapper Master to death with my graphing calculator. Nobody makes weapons of woe like Texas Instruments. Unfortunately, I went to high school on Long Island, so our Colosseum was in the basement of a Genovese drug store. Would that I was born a citizen of Texas. There I could have received the full adulation of the mob:

Frank Hammond, a counsellor at the school who was dismissed and has since filed a whistle-blower lawsuit, said: “It was gladiator-style entertainment for the staff. They were taking these boys downstairs to fight. And it was sanctioned by the principal and security.”

The (ex) principal weighs in after the jump.


Sadly, Donald “Proximo” Moten, the principal of South Oak Cliff High, denied the charges:

Moten, who resigned last year following a separate investigation, denied that any cage fights took place during his tenure.

“That’s barbaric,” he told the paper. “You can’t do that at a high school. You can’t do that anywhere. Ain’t nothing to comment on. It never did happen. I never put a stop to anything because it never happened.”

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Are you not entertained? I am shocked, shocked, to find violent pugilism going on in this establishment.

At least the school district superintendent seems to understand that no Texas education is complete without spending at least some time in a cage of death:

However the school district superintendent, Michael Hinojosa, agreed that “some things that happened inside of a cage” were “unacceptable”, and said that the school had been turned around under a new principal.

No criminal charges were filed, he said, although disciplinary action was taken.

Yeah, “some things” were unacceptable. Other things? Well, how else is Texas supposed to train the next generation of mavericks?

Texas high school used cage fighting to settle disputes [The Guardian]

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