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The most active thread since I last posted on Friday was titled, "Fight btw BCC & WJ students after game @ 8:30 Friday night" and posted in the "Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)" forum. The original poster embedded an X (formerly tweet) showing video of a brawl near the Bethesda Metro station between students from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School and Walter Johnson High School. The incident apparently occurred following a football game between the two schools. The thread grew to 30 pages before I locked it yesterday. If you appreciate careful analysis and thoughtful dialogue, this is not the thread for you. Instead, posters seemed to simply use the thread as an opportunity to spout off about their own personal agenda. Several posters immediately acted to distance MCPS and the two schools from the violence by pointing out that it occurred off school property and that there had been good security at the game itself. Proponents of MCPS high schools in other parts of the county congratulated themselves on the outcomes of their schools' games that did not include fighting. Critics of MCPS claimed that this was another sign of the school system's decline. One poster even blamed "teaching controversial topics rather than focusing on academics" and school closures during the Covid pandemic for the fighting. Those opposed to the restorative justice process practiced by MCPS made their usual snide remarks. There were demands to kick aggressors out of school and send them to prison. Other posters demanded that parents be held responsible. The video included in the original poster showed an attacker kicking a White student who was on the grown. Many thought the student doing the kicking was Black and, as a result, fixated on race. For instance, one poster wrote that this was bad because, "People already fear and mistrust black teenagers". Racism is never far from the surface in these discussions. But, others thought the attacker was White. Subsequent video showed that both White and Black kids were attacking other students. But, the issue of race remained throughout the thread with a number of posters insistent that this was a racially-based hate crime, Most posters simply saw it as a fight between students from different high schools in which race was not a factor. At least one poster, and probably more, was adamant that B-CC students had initiated the fighting by seeking out WJ students and attacking them. Administrators of both high schools issued a joint letter in which they condemned the violence and promised that those involved would be disciplined. Other posters quoted similar letters going back several years to demonstrate that fights such as this are nothing new.