As a student it really was a shock to everyone that I talked to. In my
opinion it was purely a faculty problem. It really didn't involve the
students. A lot of us were just kind of like, "What is this?" You pick
up the paper and nine out of ten days there's West Charlotte on the
front of the paper talking about these huge racial problems that they
have. None of us were really aware of them. It's like, "Uh, I didn't
know that." I think it was really with the faculty, and the students
didn't really feel much effect at all. The one thing that stands out
that I do remember that kind of shocked me was that we had an assembly
one day in tenth grade. We all went to the auditorium, and they called
this meeting. It seemed unnecessary to me. They were like well, "We
looked at the test scores," from whatever test it was, "and it's showing
that black males are the lowest scorers" on whatever test this is, "and
you all need to work on this." It just seemed like they were yelling at
us for being black males and scoring low on a particular test. I didn't
really understand that. Then at the end they were like, "Yes. There are
some people that are doing well, and some people that are very
courteous," and all this, and they pointed out like one person. I don't
know. It just seemed like, "Why are you telling us this?" I don't know.
It seemed kind of stupid to me. But that was the only thing that stood
out.