Buddy Language
Program helps ease racial and ethnic tensions on the campus
by Michele Parente
By Ricky Brown's estimation, when his fellow classmates at Brooklyn's Erasmus Hall High School return to school next week, about half of them will be carrying a weapon into the 206-year-old building.
Never mind that Erasmus is one of the city's 41 schools equipped with a metal detector, a bookbag x-ray scanner and a small army of security guards.
"If you want to get a weapon in, you can get it in," Brown says, his voice full of youthful confidence and boast.
One easy way is to leave the building after homeroom to get a weapon, since metal detectors are used only in the morning and guards probably won't check you coming in late; or, he says knives can be kept in the soles of shoes since guards tend to "pat you down" with hand-held Scanners as far as the ankles. Or, Brown says, weapons can be hidden in clothes while bookbags are scanned, then put in the bags before the body is patted down.
This last method, however, is not for the tentative. "You got to do it quickly, so no one can see you," he says.
Ricky Brown's estimate of nearly 1300 weapons a day being brought to just one high school is, no doubt, grossly exaggerated. But his view of the rough and tumble world of Flatbush is based on his experience on the inside, and in his eyes "there are more bad students than good students."
Brown depicts a school where "no body really goes to classes" and most afternoons are spent just hanging out. "During fifth and sixth period everybody's outside, smoking and playing dice. You hide when the guards come, but when they leave you just go back to doing what you were doing."
Officials of the school could not be reached for comment.
The lanky 18-year -old, whose street name is "Outlaw," also admits that there was a time when he, too, might have used one of the ways to slip a weapon into school.
But he says those days are over: Ricky Brown is going straight. And he credits citywide organization's newly formed Erasmus chapter.
"I used to be a big-time troublemaker," he says. "But I think I've calmed down since I've been with the Council."
The "Council" Brown is referring to is the Council for Unity, a school-based racial harmony program that has been billed by its executive director as the premier multicultural program in the city dealing with violence.
Indeed, it was a racial incident at Erasmus last December that brought the program to the school.
To hear Brown tell it, the Haitian students that are part of the predominantly African-America, Caribbean and Latino student body "thought they were being picked on and were probably right." So it didn't take much more than one kid stepping on another's sneaker to turn a minor scuffle between a group of Haitians and a group of Jamaicans into a mini-riot that ended up drawing in 500 of the school's 2,600 students.
In the days after the melee, a Board of Education official appealed to Bob DeSena, 51, to bring his Council for Unity program to Erasmus to help cool down the ethnic tensions.
"The concept is school-based, designed for kids by kids," says DeSena, who has headed the council since its founding in 1975. "It's a representative body of kids developing an agenda that will bring the rest of the kids together."
The aim of that agenda is battling violence. "Violence comes because people feel impotent, anonymous," DeSena says. "We have a program for self-esteem, leadership training, group dynamics and even the performing arts. These kids develop a hidden resource they didn't know they had."
The Council for Unity's nascent Erasmus chapter - one of 34 chapters in all levels of schools, in all five boroughs - had 40 teenage boys and girls at the end of the school year. DeSena says the program, which runs on a shoestring budget that is funded mostly by the city's Department of Youth Services, offers students a way to break what seems like an inevitable cycle of violence. "I remember I asked [an Erasmus member] why he joined the council and he just looked at me and said, 'I don't want to die,'" DeSena recalls.
"You want to be safe in your school, you don't always want to have to watch your back, " says Joseph Sayles, 17, also a student at Erasmus.
Sayles is Brown's sidekick, sparring partner and, now, fellow councilman. "There's a lot of people in that school who like violence. If everyone wanted peace, it would be there," says Sayles, known to his friends as "Doeboy."
Pretty harmonious words from a kid who admits he and Brown were probably chosen to participate in the program because the pair was disruptive and could benefit from some discipline.
At the first meeting, Nick Chiappetta, director of program operations, "told Doeboy to sit down and shut up, so he walked out. Nobody told Doeboy to sit down and shut up," Brown recalls.
At the second meeting, DeSena invited both Brown and Sayles to a banquet dinner for the council; afterward, they were hooked. "We were eating and having fun," Brown says. "People were being really nice and introducing themselves. I turned to Doeboy and said, 'Let's stick with this.'"
Now entering their senior year, the teens are inseparable, "mad-tight," in Brown's words. The youngest of six children, Brown lives with his mother in an apartment on Flatbush Avenue. Living with his grandmother only blocks away is his homeboy Sayles. "When I met Doeboy, we both thought we were the big, bad man of the school, so we joined forces."
In the short time the council was at Erasmus last spring, the climate in the school improved, the students say.
"Now it's better, it's more calm," Sayles says, adding that a better understanding of cultural differences is the key.
"If I knew more about a person, if I knew their language, I wouldn't make fun of it no more," Sayles says. "It's like when you're walking down the hall and they're talking and laughing in their own language and you think it's about you - but it's not."
That kind of misunderstanding often leads to bloodshed on the city's streets as well as in the school's corridors. "What I get from the program, "Brown says, "is if you have a problem, you talk it out. You don't go the gun first. That's what we used to do in my neighborhood."
Sayles depicts a typical council session as part rap session, part cultural exchange. "We all sit in a circle and if you're someone new, you'll introduce yourself. It's all about helping each other, so you talk about your problems. Kids share where they come from, like if you're from Jamaica you'll bring in money or food from Jamaica and show it. And nobody makes you feel stupid."
As parts of a member's curriculum, three Council of Unity classes are held a day at Erasmus and evening and weekend sessions may include putting on plays and cultural fairs.
What separates the Council for Unity from other programs that try to help teens give up violence are its origins. While still an English teacher at John Dewey High School in Bensonhurst, DeSena Brought together rival gang leaders - including current program director Chiappetta.
"A lot of these kids need role models and sometimes the teacher is not a role model," Chiappetta says. "A lot of them can relate to what I've experienced."
"Bob and Nick are 'Mad-Cool,' you can talk to them about anything," Brown says. "I look at what they did for themselves and I say I can do that for myself."
Both teens count on graduating from Erasmus on time. Sayles aspires to take the Sanitation Department test and Brown hopes a staff position with the council can be funded.
"I look forward to working for them…and sharing my experiences with other kids," Brown says. "You do a lot of bad things when you're young, but I'm a little wiser and older now."
