musicamusica

"just that gang wannabes were expected to do some sort of cred-establishing crime."

I live in S Cal where we have our share of gangs. There was no anticipated up tick in gang crime.(and no resulting up tick) It is an urban legend and unfortunately school administrators and their students are just as guilty as anyone else in exploiting this kind of hysteria. D had a school principal who spread a particular urban legend (about gangs riding around in cars at night with no lights and if you flashed your lights you were to be an initiation target) by posting a warning online to all students and parents. I posted the snopes link right back to him. No response. I'm sure there are still kids and parents who believe that story to this day.

JHS

OK, maybe she and her students were part of the urban legend mill. Her entire pre-college education occurred in "bad" neighborhoods in Philadelphia, and she went to college on the Chicago South Side, but she had never heard anyone talk about Halloween gang initiations before. She is teaching at a school where gangs aren't something that happens somewhere else; her students are in daily contact with them. The police presence was real -- the conversations began when she asked why there were 20 police cars in the three blocks near the school on Friday.

garland

That story goes around my students and coworkers who live in Newark, too. It never comes to pass ( thank the lord), but that doesn't stop the texting and the kids kept home from school, and the fear.

Unfortunately.

And I'm not naive. My D was beat up in the park near our house, on a random summer afternoon, in a crime deemed a gang initiaton. Stuff happens, but I think that giving creedence to the rumor mill just distracts us from reality (and keeps kids out of school.)

Edit: JHS, kudos to your D for taking that job. it's not an easy one, in any circumstances. And they need more smart, well-educated teachers like her.

Naturally

When I was in high school our school administration put around the same warning (about the flashing lights and gang members). This was before the internet was widespread and I'm not sure if Snopes even existed yet, so I thought it was for real. (Of course, nothing happened.) I'm not sure how/where the rumor originated, but of course kids were spreading it like wildfire. Chain letters, maybe?