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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Saturday, March 11, 2006

Mediators help settle high schools' dispute

By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer

After an hour-and-a-half mediation session yesterday, students at the center of the dispute between Farrington and Campbell High Schools had resolved their disagreements and were sharing hugs, jokes and pizza in the offices of Adult Friends For Youth, the private service agency that helped settle the two-week-old feud.

"It was a good meeting. Now the kids are almost like family," said outreach counselor Mac Schwenke.

Three counselors from the agency guided the mediation session and said the 12 young men in attendance all wanted to resolve their differences.

The resolution was helped when two of the boys — one from Campbell and one from Farrington — realized they were cousins, and met each other for the first time.

When the session was over, the young men resolved to spread the message that peace had been attained.

"We emphasized it's important to get the word out to your community that this thing has been resolved," said Schwenke.

The Campbell High School boys apologized for jumping Farrington students on their campus, he said.

The dispute that at one point involved a standoff between about 100 students on an 'Ewa street corner, began with a disagreement between two boys, said Schwenke.

"What happened was it started off with two boys joking, but one guy took it serious and they ended up fighting with each other," said Schwenke. Joking around escalated to insults being exchanged and things got personal, Schwenke said. "Then one guy took off his shirt and they started going at it."

That occurred on a Friday, he said, and by the following Tuesday a group of 11 boys from Farrington had come back to Campbell looking for trouble.

"There were individual skirmishes, one on one, and then a lot of guys from Campbell jumped in. It started on the campus and moved across to the park," Schwenke said.

The posting of the fight on an Internet site frequented by young people inflamed additional anger among other Farrington students who didn't have any idea how it started, but got involved anyway, said Schwenke. And that led to the Friday night street-corner stand-off that was broken up when Schwenke and other counselors picked up the Farrington group and bused them back home to Kalihi.

He said he and other counselors from his agency will continue to work with the students at both schools.

Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com.