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This year Berkeley High School teachers and administrators decided to approach issues of violence and conflict from a new direction.  

In addition to a new surveillance system, they have instituted a conflict resolution program to prevent problems before they can even begin. 

“We’re bucking the unfortunate trend of the larger society to handle conflict after the fact and be reactive, which our skyrocketing prison population is evidence of,” said social living teacher John Fike, who co-coordinates the Berkeley High School Peer Mediation program with newly hired counselor Susan Werd. 

The Conflict Mediation Center is filled with bright blue and sunny yellow couches, some of which Fike found on the street. On Wednesdays peer mediators, usually about 16, learn the steps of conflict mediation. When teachers hear about a conflict, they will refer the students to the mediators, who will call them out of class to come to the peer mediation center. 

The students follow a several-step process to help students describe their emotions and try to reach an accord. Tami Graham is a case manager at Berkeley Dispute Resolution Services, a 13-year-old nonprofit promoting mediation.  

“People, teens, adults, whatever, just want to feel like they’ve been heard,” she said. “If they feel like they’ve been heard by the other person, even if the other person doesn’t agree, then they’re much more willing to move to resolution.” 

Graham said the major issues between teens are “jealousy between friends and gossip gone out of control.” Student mediators concurred that most of the conflicts they encountered were of the “he said, she said” variety.  

“High school disputes tend to be caused by a lack of communication. They tend to be something where a third party sparks a conflict,” said junior Tova Perrin, president of the peer mediation group. 

Mediators don’t break up fights or deal with any kind of physical violence. “It’s not part of our job description,” said Tova.  

Gennel Wade, a senior at Berkeley High and first time mediator, said that the process helps end spats that could have escalated into violence. “I haven’t seen anyone I know who has had a conflict resolution that has fought that person later,” she said.  

Barry Wiggan, head of security services for Berkeley High School declined to say how many student fights have resulted in disciplinary action this year, but he finds conflict resolution to be, on the whole, quite effective. “Fights are sometimes like the WWF(World Wrestling Federation). Its never over. Conflict mediation provides some resolution,” he said. 

One addition to the program this year is mediation between teachers and students. In the case of an ongoing class conflict, the teacher and student will meet with a team made up of a teacher mediator and a student mediator.  

“We did a mediation recently where a teacher and a student both felt disrespected,” said Werd. “What we’re trying to do is get people to talk more. A lot of the issues are discipline issues, but because every student is different some things can be worked out at mediation.” 

The wipe erase board in the Conflict Mediation Center is covered in scrawls with memos of upcoming workshops and presentations. In order to publicize the program students act out skits representing conflicts, describing their skills to students and staff.  

The publicity seems to be working. In the first semester, the mediators have received 30 referrals. And six of those came just last week. Unfortunately not every dispute that gets referred ends up with its time in the court of peer mediators. Werd said that the school schedule was not designed to accommodate the organization required for conflict mediation sessions. 

“In a community you have a center, you can schedule an appointment. Here you have to pull people out of classes.” Many times, she said, one of the people in the conflict or a mediator may be absent, or unable to leave class. 

But Werd considers these minor glitches for the first year of a major program. Although Fikes has been leading a group of peer mediators at Berkeley High School for three years, the earlier program was much less formal. A statewide bill allocating funding to schools for violence prevention made money available to the program for the first time this year.  

Alex Palou, principal at Berkeley Alternative High School, helped create the proposal to disburse funds in the Berkeley Unified School District. “Basically it was looking at what is existing in the district right now and how we can we help support the grassroots efforts; the seed has already been planted and they just needed to be institutionalized.”