THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 10, 1995 TAG: 9511100056
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E11 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JULIA FILZ, HIGH SCHOOL CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
ON A LATE October evening, a car rolls slowly down a Chesapeake street. It stops before a group of houses and the driver yells, ``Now!'' Rolls of toilet paper and dozens of eggs fly from the windows.
In Virginia Beach, students arrive at school on an October morning to find the building tagged with messages from a rival school. Later, the principal of the assaulting school reads a note of apology during the morning announcements.
As usual, as football season ends the destruction is not limited to the football field.
``Hell Week'' marks the annual matchup between Chesapeake's Western Branch High School and Portsmouth's Churchland High. Students spend the week smashing windows of each other's schools and decorating district neighborhoods with eggs, toilet paper and spray paint.
Former Churchland principal Edgar M. Morgan Jr. traces Hell Week to 1969, the year Portsmouth annexed the Churchland area and students were split between that school and the new Western Branch High in Chesapeake.
``All the Chesapeake schools are rivals, but the Western Branch-Churchland rivalry is bad,'' said Western Branch senior Adam Hardaway.
Intense rivalries simmer all over South Hampton Roads - Norcom and Wilson in Portsmouth, Deep Creek and Great Bridge in Chesapeake, Nansemond River and Lakeland in Suffolk and Maury and Norview in Norfolk.
The 10 Virginia Beach high schools also enjoy healthy competition, but the rivalry between First Colonial and Cox is legendary.
For more than 20 years, Cox and First Colonial students have played pranks on each other. Occurring mostly during the school's respective homecoming weeks and the week of the Cox vs. First Colonial football game, pranks have included egging and toilet papering school property, planting trees in the middle of the football fields, smashing pumpkins along the roads leading to Cox and First Colonial and writing messages in toothpaste on the track and stadium seats.
But two weeks ago, First Colonial students went even further.
They spray-painted messages on the Cox building ranging from ``FC rules'' to ``Cox is (expletive deleted),'' egged the school, turned over stairs leading to the portable buildings and tore off the railings to those stairs. They also scattered trash around the football stadium.
``If it had just been a few eggs and some toilet paper, I wouldn't have called (First Colonial principal) Dr. Charton,'' said Cox principal Perry B. Pope. ``But when I saw what had been written on the school building, I called him and said, `I think you need to come look at this.' ''
First Colonial principal Stephan B. Charton read an apology to the Cox student body over the morning announcements.
``Everyone was surprised,'' said First Colonial senior Kimberly Friedman. ``It makes the whole school look bad.''
The Code of Student Conduct for the Virginia Beach City Schools allows principals to suspend or expel students from school based on the grievousness of the act. Pope did not say what action he and Charton are planning to take if the culprits are caught.
``Appropriate administrative action will be taken if the person or persons responsible are caught,'' Pope promised.
Although some students enjoy the harmless antics of their fellow students, most don't find humor in the destruction of school property.
``(The pranks) can be funny, but some people go over the line,'' said Cox senior Amy Taylor. MEMO: Julia Filz is a senior at Cox High School.
by CNB