Name____________________________________                             Date_______________________
           25 Chicago Students Arrested for a Middle School Food Fight
Reading Comprehension Worksheet           

Directions:  Read the passage below carefully. When you have finished reading it completely, answer the questions that follow.

By SUSAN SAULNY  --  Published: November 10, 2009 

CHICAGO - The food fight here started the way such bouts do in school lunchrooms most anywhere: an apple was tossed, a cookie turned into a torpedo, and an orange plunked someone in the head. Within minutes, dozens of middle-school students had joined in the ruckus, and spattered adults were ducking for cover.
By the end of the day, 25 of the students, ages 11 to 15, had been rounded up, arrested, taken from school and put in jail. A spokesman for the Chicago police said the charges were reckless conduct, a misdemeanor.

That was last Thursday afternoon. Now parents are questioning what seem to them like the criminalization of age-old adolescent pranks, and the lasting legal and psychological impact of the arrests.
"My children have to appear in court," Erica Russell, the mother of two eighth-grade girls who spent eight hours in jail, said Tuesday. "They were handcuffed, slammed in a wagon, had their mug shots taken and treated like real criminals."

"They're all scared," Ms. Russell said of the two dozen arrested students. "You never know how children will be impacted by that. I was all for some other kind of punishment, but not jail. Who hasn't had a food fight?"

The students were released into the custody of their parents on Thursday night, the police said. They were also suspended for two days by the school, the Calumet middle-school campus of Perspectives Charter Schools, in the Gresham neighborhood on the South Side.

Diana Shulla-Cose, president and co-founder of Perspectives Charter Schools, said that an on-campus police officer had called for backup as the food fight escalated and that the resulting heavy police presence had led in turn to the large number of arrests. 

Ms. Shulla-Cose described the entire episode as "unfortunate" and added, "We don't take this lightly."

She also said the school was working individually with the families of students who were arrested to support them through a difficult time, and through the process of getting the youths back to classes.

School officials met with parents on Tuesday to explain the events from their point of view. But some parents questioned what they saw as the random nature of the arrests.

"My daughter said someone threw an apple at her, so she retaliated," Shirlanda Sivels said. "I said, 'Why didn't they grab you, too?' She said, 'I don't know.' She didn't feel good about it, seeing her friends taken away."

If the charges are not thrown out when the students go before a judge this month, criminal justice experts said, the accused will most likely be sentenced to community service or probation. Since they are juveniles, their records would remain confidential until adulthood - 17 under Illinois law - at which point the arrests would be expunged.

Questions:

1)   What is the tone of this selection?

2)   What is the setting of this passage?

3)   What seems to be the author's intent for writing this selection?

4)   What is the Main Idea of this passage?

5>   Define: ruckus, criminalization, retaliated, expunged 

6>   Do you think it's fair to throw middle-schoolers in jail over a food fight? Why/why not? 

7>   Does the article make clear why the police were called in? 

8>   Can you imagine the situation getting out of hand? If the fight got too destructive or violent, what should the school officials and police have done? 

9>   Have you ever had a food fight? Tell me about it.

10>  Have you ever had police come to your school to deal with violence or a misdemeanor? 

11>  What are some of the difficulties of making arrests at "mob scenes"? Can police determine who was responsible? If they cannot, should they arrest anyone at all? 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/us/11foodfight.html