| How has Roosevelt changed since you started working here ’til now? |
I think the most tremendous change I’ve seen since I started working here at Roosevelt is in the change from identity. I’ve seen the students go away from the traditional Roosevelt spirit into more of a gang affiliated type of action. I can walk around campus today and not know who the athletes are. When I started in 1979, I could identify who the athletes were because everyone was proud to be a Roosevelt person. You had a  Roosevelt, maybe, track sweatshirt on, swim outfit, cheerleaders. Everyone was flying the colors. Now, you go out there and you see everybody bald, big pants, all looking the same, coming out of one mold. So Roosevelt has lost their pride. You don’t know who the athletes are, you don’t know who the scholar people are, you don’t know who the cheerleaders are. Everyone has got a lot of peer pressure, I think, and that’s what I, a tremendous change that I’ve seen. I’ve seen people getting more and more grouped, going away from being individualism than anything else, they’re in groups more than anything now and they want to be identified as a group, where as before people used to be identified as separate and that’s the big change that I’ve seen. I feel a lot of lack of respect for each other. |
| How has the community changed? |
What I’ve seen, the tremendous change that I’ve seen in the community, from my days in high school to present was, at one time, there used to be known gangs. For example, when I went to Wilson there was Happy Valley, Rose Hill, and then we used to hear about the East Los Angeles gangs, which were White Fence and Monta Via. Now what has happened over time is everyone has gotten down. Now they’ve broken it down from bigger gangs to smaller gangs to crews. Now you have streets. You have Michigan Street, you have Pickett Street, you have Clarence Street. Everybody’s getting smaller and smaller. You have the crews, the tagging crews that’re now saying they’re not violent but become gangs themselves and they’re tagging crews. You have party crews that are now being identified. Everyone is getting smaller and smaller and everyone is getting more and more against each other. You know, you can live across the street from a person you’ve grown up with all your life but because they’re from a different gang you don’t get along with each other. This is a tremendous change that I’ve seen, is there’s no respect for each other anymore, it’s more gang turf affiliated identity. They identify themselves with a particular street or a particular gang and everyone says that it’s their street, their gang, you know, and it’s not theirs. We’re all here living in the same area, in the same community, same color, same everything but everyone is separating and, you know, you’re getting, everyone’s getting smaller and smaller and trying to be more powerful than the other. |
