Principal and Chief Innovator of Milpitas High School and New Campus Programs Greg Wohlman introduced the Fight Free Campus Challenge (FFCC) on Oct. 13, 2023, to help reduce the number of fights on campus, he said. He originally had rewards planned for all grade levels that could remain fight-free throughout the year, but a consensus on how to reward the students was never achieved as there was limited student feedback, he added.
Since the start of the initiative, there were 17 fights in the first semester and another 13 fights and one assault in the second semester as of May 21, according to statistics provided by administration. Of these fights and assaults, there were 24 freshmen, 12 sophomores, 10 juniors, and two seniors involved from the start of the FFCC to May 21, according to administration.
“As soon as you engage (in a fight), you lose your autonomy; you lose your choice of how it is going to end,” Wohlman said. “That is what makes me nervous and worried about kids’ futures—when either you’re going to be the recipient of violence or you’re a person engaging in violence (who) needs to pay the debt that you create by harming another person, and that’s really hard for people to recover from on both sides.”
The start of the 2023-24 school year saw 11 fights across all grade levels by mid-October, motivating Wohlman to find a solution to combat the increased fighting, he said. There had only been 20 fights in the entirety of the 2022-23 school year, according to Wohlman.
“As a society, we have become accustomed to, ‘Well, large school campuses, you’re going to have fights.That’s just the way it is,’” Wohlman said. “But we have to stop accepting that that’s the way it is.”
Wohlman believes that if fights aren’t accepted in places like grocery stores and restaurants, there shouldn’t be any fights on campus either, he said. Starting the Fight-Free Campus Challenge has been a way for him to combat the narrative that fights belong on campus, he said. Additionally, roughly 18% of students and adults believe MHS can be fight-free, which Wohlman surveyed himself at the start of the 2023-24 school year, he added.
“My ultimate hope is, years from now, a student and I will be in a conversation and I’ll say, ‘Yeah, I bet there’s gonna be a fight tomorrow,’ and a kid will look at me, laugh, and say ‘Yeah, we would never have a fight here. This is a school,’ and they would walk away,” Wohlman said. “Then I would know (MHS has become fight-free); we did it.”
Although converting the narrative and mentality around fighting is difficult, Wohlman plans to meet with freshmen every year and give them a similar talk to the one he gave at the beginning of this school year as an introduction to the challenge to discourage fighting, he said. He has not decided on his plan for returning students, and he relies on student feedback to understand and decide what is necessary, he added.
Some students have said, “‘We know it’s a fight-free campus, we understand, but, Mr. Wohlman, I got really mad,’” Wohlman said. “But at least, even in that conversation where somebody chose to fight, they were still processing whether to fight or not, rather than just go and do it. That is still a win in some ways and that student is owning their emotions and their anger and they’re trying to work through it.”
Wohlman emphasizes that much of the success of the Fight-Free campus initiative may be hidden, as many students considered fighting and chose not to, he said. Those prevented fights might have also stopped multiple other conflicts and issues that could have stemmed from the original fights, Wohlman added. The success of FFCC is relative to the beginning of the school year when fights were common and an issue noticed especially by security guards.
“I thought it (the Fight-Free Campus Challenge) was a really good idea, a really good implement at the beginning of the year because it was really tough for us (security guards) in the beginning of the year because there was a lot of fights going down,” safety supervisor Pulefano “Niko” Afuola said. “Since then, there (were) a couple more fights, but it’s been a lot calmer since the beginning of the year where it was kind of rocky.”
Afuola was one of the many security guards on campus who noticed the increased fighting on campus this school year and approved of the Fight-Free Campus initiative, he said. He wishes the school could have stayed consistent with the message but understands the logistical difficulties in setting up regular meetings, Afuola added.
“I think there should just be a better reward system so people can actually feel like they’d accomplish something for not fighting,” junior Arnav Pahuja said.
Some students like Pahuja believe FFCC overall was a positive endeavor but the execution could have been improved, Pahuja said.
“I really believe in the kids of Milpitas, and I really think if we want a fight-free campus, the kids can make it happen and they can stay safe,” Wohlman said. “We can improve as communicators so even when students are super angry at each other, they can have the courage to talk it through, which takes a lot more time and energy than it does to go have a fight.”