This American Life: Harper High School, Part One

Blog Post #1

Marlene Lawston

This American Life: Harper High School, Part One

This podcast is set at Harper High School in Chicago and the surrounding neighborhood. In the past year, 29 students have been shot in this neighborhood. The podcast shows the struggle of the High School to keep its students safe amidst the dangerous neighborhood around the school. In addition, it reveals how different the educational environment is of the students who attend inner city schools compared to the educational environment experienced by the majority of American students. Almost all of the students at Harper High School are affiliated with gangs. Gang affiliation is dependent solely on what block the student lives on; there is no special “initiation.” As a police officer put it “gangs can’t be avoided.” These gangs are a major cause of the shootings that occur. Shootings occur for big and small reasons -  a majority of them occur as some type of retaliation. To “survive,” the students live by three rules: never walk alone, never walk with someone else, never walk on the sidewalk. Never walk alone because you become a target; never walk with other people because it will make you more affiliated with their gang, and walk in the streets not sidewalk so that no one sneaks up on you and attacks you. In October during the school’s pep rally for homecoming, rumors of another shooting in the neighborhood were confirmed. The faculty of the school worked on figuring out how this person’s death would affect the students by mapping out which gang he was affiliated with, who his relatives were in the school, and which gang shot him. Due to fear of retaliation, the students affiliated with the gangs in this situation were sent home and there were doubts about whether or not Harper High School would be able to have its homecoming game and dance.