Chapter 77 – Conflict Resolution – Holly Hayfield

Our idealistic dreams about changing the nature of the school and developing a formal club system didn’t involve doing so much paperwork. We were swamped by an absolute mountain of papers as a daily occurrence. Some of these papers were still leftover registration forms from new clubs looking to be recognized. Another portion of these forms were these newfound clubs asking for money to purchase their starting equipment. It was a bureaucratic nightmare.

The bulk of these forms, however, were requests to use something the school already had but was kept out of their reach. An increasingly common example was permission to use school amenities for this extracurricular activity. We found ourselves butting heads not only against outdated regulations regarding these facilities, but pushback from teachers. They had mixed feelings about their tools and supplies being used for questionable purposes. We tried to ease their concerns by assuring them that these extracurricular groups were a common good.

Our most recent headache stemmed from a girl name Christina. Christina was a somewhat popular senior student who was known for helping tutor other senior students that needed it. This girl was generally friendly, outgoing enough that she had friends outside of her clique, and approachable. She was the type of person even a stranger could ask for help. She was the type of girl that I originally wondered how she ended up at a school like this. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t learn the reason for that until it was too late.

Initially, when she first came to submit her forms to officialize her chemistry club, we thought of it as an absolute win. A star student like Christina creating an academically focused club was exactly what we needed. It seemed like a great way of proving the success of our new club system. This would convince both the staff and other students that these new changes were for the best. Christina’s chemistry club would become a role model that we referenced to explain to people what a school club should be like.

That was until yesterday afternoon, when one of her widely-attended science demonstrations resulted in an explosion! The explosion itself was fairly minor, but that didn’t stop glass debris from the containing beaker to be sent flying at multiple students. No one was seriously injured, but it was a bad look for the chemistry club. It was an even worse look for the student council. It was the student council that had pushed to get Christina the permission she needed to use the school’s official chemistry lab and supplies.

The science teacher that normally operated the classroom held us just as responsible as Christina. She was against Christina using the classroom in the first place so she was happy to rub salt into the wound. She went out of the way to try proving how right she was to everyone. This had other teachers thinking twice about what clubs should and shouldn’t be allowed to do. Permissions for some clubs were immediately rescinded, while others were being reconsidered.

The main outcome of this was more paperwork, stacks and stacks of it. Every member of the student council was hard at work before school began, during lunch, and after school to try whittling down the amount of papers on our table. As much as I wanted to chalk it up to the consequences of leadership, part of me couldn’t help but feel that much of this work was self-inflicted. After Christina’s little display this felt like penance. Still, we weren’t discouraged from trying to improve and expand the club system as planned.

All this just meant we needed to be more cautious about who was using what and why. Perhaps the true consequence of Christina’s action was the fact that we started treating new requests to use school facilities with greater scrutiny. We agreed, after some deliberation, that we’d need to be rigid over the topic of who had permission to use what. However, this new frame of mind wasn’t without its consequences. It wasn’t long before opposition came to this new policy as well.

It was another afternoon lunch together in the student council room. All of us, me, Val, Lilith, Sam, and Jay were presently at work between bites of food. Two more additional helpers were recruited to help with the work. The first was Charlotte, who came to help with the paperwork at my request. The second was Alison, who was recently in the habit of invading the student council room in order to butt into whatever we were doing at the time.

Alison was probably still hoping she could steal Sam’s spot. Unfortunately for her, Sam was attending more regularly due to pressure from Val. Usually we’d dismiss Alison outright, but this time her pestering was actually appreciated for once. However, going by the look on her face as she was reading a form, she was starting to regret coming by. She was sitting in an extra chair at the end of the table, between Lilith and Jay, opposite of Sam’s end of the table.

“Someone ought to really teach these girls how to write properly.” Alison said in frustration, “This handwriting is atrocious. It’s unfortunate, but I’ll have to deny their request on the basis that their moon runes are illegible by anyone not educated by a wizard.”

Sam smirked.

“Gee, what a generous administrator you’ll make some day.” Sam said sarcastically.

“Thank you.” Alison said in full seriousness.

Charlotte walked back in with a cup holder filled with 4 coffee cups. She came in just soon enough to hear the tail end of the conversation. She paused behind Alison and looked down at the paper Alison was writing on.

“Oh, Allie, you’ll have to redo that.” Charlotte said.

“Excuse me?” Alison asked.

“We’re not supposed to write anything in cursive.” Charlotte said while handing Lilith a cup of coffee. “A lot of the student body doesn’t read cursive. You’ll need to rewrite that in print. These are Ms. Sampson’s orders.”

Alison sighed and rubbed her temples.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. That means I have to do this entire stack all over again. What sort of ignorant heathen doesn’t know how to read cursive by the time they’re in high school?”

“Well, speaking for the ignorant heathens…” Val said without looking up from her work, “Not all of us grew up under the same circumstances, and not all of us grew up here in the US. You’ll have to practice more at being generous, like for that administrator job Sam was mentioning. Rewrite it in print.”

Sam smirked again. Alison rolled her head in annoyance, but pulled her stack of completed papers back so that she could make the corrections.

Charlotte came over to me to hand me the cup of coffee I asked for.

“Thank you.” I said.

“How goes the progress while I was out of the room?” Charlotte asked, “Well, not counting Alison of course.”

Alison groaned.

“It’s going well, but it could be better.” I said.

“That’s an understatement.” Jay said. “At this rate we’ll be back to where we started by this time tomorrow with all the new papers coming in.”

Charlotte set one cup of coffee down near Val. Val didn’t stop working even as Charlotte did so.

“It was to be expected.” Val said, “No matter what, there was always going to be a large volume of paperwork. The best we can do right now is grin and bear it. It’ll be a couple of weeks before things stabilize. Until then, be prepared to work.”

“You should’ve taken up Naomi’s offer.” Sam said.

Val finally looked up from her work to scoff at Sam.

“Really…? Honestly…? You think those monkeys could sit down long enough to handle boring work like this without writing mumbo jumbo between lines of coherent text?”

Sam shrugged.

“It might be worth a shot. There are a few girls in the group that might surprise you.” Sam said.

“For now let’s work with what we have.” I said, “Naomi and her friends already helped us out a lot during the Fall Festival. Let’s not lean on them too much.”

Lilith yawned and pulled away from the paper she was working on to stretch.

“I swear if I see one more request for school funds to buy a brand new laptop or something for their club I’m going to flip.” Lilith said. “I’m getting the feeling that some of these people formed clubs solely with the intent of using school money.”

“As they’re allowed to,” Alison said. “It’s our duty to tell them no and give them a swift kick to the curb.”

Sam opened her mouth to respond but was interrupted by someone throwing the door open behind Alison. The sound of the bang against the door was so loud that we all turned up to see who was coming into the student council room like this. The girl was a tall, athletic looking girl wearing gym shorts and a long sleeve white jersey. She had long brown hair that was tied back into a ponytail and dark green eyes. This was someone I had never met. She had an angry look on her face while scanning the room, and then her search stopped at Val.

“Valentina…!” This girl shouted.

“Kylie…?” Val asked.

Kylie stomped over to where Val was sitting and Val stood up out of her chair. Kylie aggressively poked an index finger into Val’s chest.

“You gave away the volleyball club’s room!” Kylie shouted.

“What…? No I didn’t.” Val said.

“Then why is this so-called badminton club trying to kick my club out of our usual area?”

“That’s not right.” Jay said. “I was the one that greenlit their request to use the small gym. No one has been using it since…”

Kylie quickly turned towards Jay.

“The volleyball club has been using it!” Kylie shouted, “How can you just kick us out of it out of nowhere?! We’ve been using it since the first week of school!”

Val shook her head.

“No, no, no, I talked to the PE teacher before signing off on that new club’s request. She says no one had official permission to use the small gym. Up until now all of the athletic groups were supposed to be sharing the main gymnasium so that the teachers could keep an eye on them. She said they could use the small gym since there’s less risk of someone playing badminton getting hurt.”

“That’s a bunch of bullshit!” Kylie said, still shouting, “That PE teacher doesn’t know what she’s talking about! We’ve been using the small gym for volleyball because the basketball club doesn’t like to share the main gym with anyone!”

I stood up from my seat also.

“This is obviously a misunderstanding so let’s try to calm down.” I said, “We can work something out now that we know someone else wants to share the small gym.”

“We could set up some sort of schedule system.” Lilith suggested, “That’s what should’ve been done first in the main gym. We already have other clubs that share rooms. It shouldn’t be difficult to setup for the small gym either.”

“Yeah, relax.” Sam said, “It’s not that big of a deal.”

“It’s a big deal to us! We don’t want to share anything!” Kylie shouted and then looked back at Val, “Tell the badminton club to get lost! We had the small gym first.”

“No chance,” Val said.

“Why not…?”

“The badminton club went through all the trouble of properly registering their club and getting official permission to use the small gym. Why should they be denied for a club that didn’t even put in the bare minimum to let someone know that they were using the small gym in the first place? You could’ve at least talked to the PE about the situation long ago.” Val said.

Kylie scoffed.

“That’s not the point! They don’t even need the small gym in the first place. They could play badminton outside!”

“You could play volleyball outside.” Alison joked unhelpfully.

This snarky comment from Alison only seemed to fluster Kylie even more. She looked back at Val, crossed her arm, and lifted her chin.

“The volleyball club isn’t leaving the small gym.” Kylie said matter-of-factly, “We were there first. It’s ours.”

Val glared at this.

“Now you’re just being childish!” Val shouted now, “They applied for it! You sat on your ass instead of registering! If you really cared about it then you should’ve did something about it long ago!”

“You…!” Kylie shouted.

Kylie grabbed Val by the collar of her uniform and Val return the gesture. Suddenly this was becoming incredibly dangerous. Val wasn’t thinking about how a fight in the student council room would affect her reputation as president. That was why I ran around the table to force myself between them. I pushed them both away, but they still held onto each other. Sam stood up to help hold Val back. Jay stood up to hold Kylie back.

“Enough!” I shouted at the two of them, “That’s enough of that! Let’s not resort to violence! We can talk this out!”

They still weren’t letting go of each other, even as we held them back.

“It’s not fair!” Kylie shouted, “You can’t just come in and set new rules for everything.”

“Umm… Yes we can.” Alison said with a smirk, “That’s basically what a student council does.”

“Alison, shut the hell up!” I said and turned to Charlotte, “Charlotte, go get a teacher! Tell them there’s an emergency in the library.”

“O-okay!” Charlotte said.

Kylie let go of Val. Jay let go of Kylie.

“That won’t be necessary.” Kylie said as she backed away, “I’ll leave right now. Just know that the small gym belongs to my club!”

“We’ll see about that!” Val shouted.

Kylie turned on her heels and stormed out of the student council room. Jay and Sam sat back down when they realized the threat was gone. Val was slower to return to her seat. It was obvious to see that she was emotionally shaken up by the interaction. She was so easy to rile up sometimes that it had to be straining on her. She slowly sat back down into her seat and let out a long sigh. I put one hand on her shoulder.

“That went well.” Alison said.

Everyone ignored Alison’s comment.

“Is Kylie someone you’re familiar with?” I asked.

“She’s another senior student.” Val said. “We’ve had a few classes before in the past. I’ve never seen her act like that though. This is something else we’re going to have to worry about. What a pain…”

“A schedule system would’ve worked.” Lilith said. “I don’t know why she’s so against it. It’s worked fine with other groups.”

“She’s selfish.” Jay said. “The basketball club didn’t want to share with her. Now she doesn’t want to share with anyone either.”

Sam shrugged.

“I don’t know about that but she set the tone when she came in here shouting at everyone. It’s hard to take any requests seriously when she acts like that.” Sam said.

Charlotte sat down in the extra seat pulled up between my seat and Sam’s seat.

“I was afraid that she was really going to start a fight. I kinda froze up, not sure what to do.” Charlotte said.

“Well, whatever…” Valentina said, “If she wants to have the gym stripped from her by force then she’ll have nothing to blame but her own selfish behavior.”

“Wait…” I said flatly, “I don’t think we should make such a quick decision about this. Even if we did keep the volleyball club from using the small gym then that would look inconsiderate from the perspective of anyone that didn’t hear Kylie just now. I want a chance to talk to the rest of the volleyball club.”

“There’s no sense in talking to them. Kylie’s their leader.” Val said. “They were probably the ones that pushed Kylie to come here in the first place.”

“Maybe, but I’d like to talk to her once she’s cooled down. You said that she wasn’t normally like this. She might’ve been letting her hot emotions override her rational mind. At least give me the chance to speak to her calmly.”

Jay leaned back in her chair.

“That may not be a good idea after seeing that sort of tantrum. Is it even safe for you to go talk to someone like that alone?” Jay asked. “I mean, you’re way smaller than she is. The volleyball club could just toss you into a locker and leave you there until someone came across it.”

“That’s right.” Val said. “We’re too busy to spend time on people like that anyways.”

I thought about it for a moment and then looked over at Sam.

“Sam, do you think you could look out for me if I go talk to them after school?”

Sam grinned.

“It would be my pleasure.” Sam said.

“Fine. I won’t try to stop you two.” Val said, “But you’re probably wasting your time.”

“It’s worth a shot.” I said.

Afterschool I met up with Sam at our predetermined rendezvous point outside the cafeteria. She was leaning against one of the vending machines while taking practice swings with her bat. I had no idea where she acquired the bat from. I hoped that she wasn’t planning on using that during our meeting with Kylie and the volleyball club. When she spotted me walking up to her she ran over excitedly and wrapped me into a hug. She put one arm around me as we began walking together.

“Okay, so what’s with the bat?” I asked.

“After helping the baseball club set up after school yesterday they said I could keep this as a gift.” Sam said.

“You’re joking.”

“I’m serious! The girls and I played a few rounds after helping move equipment yesterday. You should’ve seen Jin’s homerun.”

“You’re not planning to use that on the volleyball club, are you?”

“Only if they lay a hand on you…”

“Can you let me handle the talking?”

“I’ll follow your lead, but Val told me that if you come back with a scratch on you then she’ll hold me responsible.”

“Val…” I hissed under my breath. “Just don’t go swinging that thing around willy-nilly. We don’t want anyone to feel intimidated.”

“Who says willy-nilly these days?”

“It’s an old habit...”

We made it to the small gym and, as expected, the entire badminton group was standing outside the gym doors. They were arguing with the two volleyball club members that were guarding the doorway. They were mostly in control of the volume of their voices, but it wasn’t clear how long this would last. This was a school for troubled girls after all. Eventually someone would test the other group’s resolve in some dramatic escalation. Sam and I walked in between the two groups. The badminton group made space for us as we walked up, but the volleyball club members didn’t budge an inch.

“Good, the vice president is here.” One of the badminton club members said, “I hope you’re about to do something about these volleyball club girls.”

“We aren’t giving up our space to anyone!” One of the volleyball club girls said before I could even get a word in.

The two groups went back to arguing like children.

“Stop fighting!” I shouted over them, “Please, let’s not shout and argue. I’m here to talk. May I come into the gym?”

The two volleyball club girls looked at each other with uncertainty. The shorter one ran into the gym, leaving me without an answer. Her friend waited and watched us silently. The badminton girls whispered amongst themselves. It was easy to hear the frustration in their voices. They, just like Kylie, felt like they were being robbed of something. Shortly after, the other girl returned and pointed at me.

“You can come in, vice president. Kylie wants to speak to you privately. Your friend with the bat can’t come in.”

“What?!” Sam asked.

That was no surprise. After all, she was brandishing a potential weapon like it was nothing.

“It’s okay Sam. Just wait here for now.” I said. “I’ll be back for you in a moment. I’ve got this.”