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Frankie Guevara
STACC English 100
Professor Gabrielsson
October 28, 2014
Students Become Crime Victims
One of the many challenges anyone will face as a college student is learning to join
various academic discourse communities. A discourse community is a group of individuals who
share common language norms, characteristics, patterns, or practices, and use communication to
achieve these goals. There are many discourse communities that are presented around us, but
here at Pasadena City College they vary from mechanical engineers to biologist, psychologists,
international students, English Language Learners, undocumented students, students from violent
homes, etc. In order to be accepted into these discourse communities, an individual must learn
the ways of communication in that particular group. Despite the fact, that discourse communities
may seem unfamiliar to many people, at some point in our lives we’ve all experienced joining a
discourse community.
In Erin Gruwell’s The Freedom Writer’s Diary, there are many discourse communities in
which are presented, but a particular community that is present in PCC and who are represented
in The Freedom Writer’s Diary are students from violent homes. For instance, in Diary Entry 9,
Ms. Gruwell asked the students to draw a picture describing their neighborhood. The students
immediately described their neighborhoods as surrounded by gangsters and drug dealers. Every
day theses students have to face racial tensions and night gun shootings in their neighborhood.
Despite the fact, that a neighborhood is an area surrounding a particular place, person, or object a
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neighborhood is someone’s home. Home is not just confined to the four walls you live, breath,
and grow up in, but it is where an individual is able to unravel themselves. These students have
to face the practices of gun violence, drug dealing, and the senseless killings of innocent human
beings every day. They also had to work on preventing the same fate occurring, that had
happened to those individuals that they were close to (20-21).
In any community, there is the question that if an individual has the knowledge to join a
discourse community. I believe that anyone could join a certain discourse community as long as
they are able to communicate in their language norms. During my academic career, I have been
fortunate enough to not have witnessed violence at home, but I have had close friends who have.
I remember a particular friend, who would like to remain anonymous, came into school every
day with a baggy sweater and sweats. Each day it was either black or gray which suggested fear.
I would rarely see her in just jeans and a t-shirt. Until one day she came into class and told me
and her best friend that her dad was in a gang and he started to physically abuse her mom. She
then told us that she felt scared, depressed, and most of all felt guilty. Her dad would yell and hit
her mom because of her. She told us he would say that because she “ruined” the family, when in
reality it was never her fault. We then realized why she was doing poorly in school, why she
lacked concentration, and why she never stood tall because she felt diminished. When she told us
what was going on I felt her pain, I felt part of the community of individuals who experienced
violence at home, even though I myself have not experience it. I still know her today and I asked
her, “What it was like waking up in the morning knowing what was happening at home.” She
responded by saying that, it was emotionally difficult because the woman who raised, bathed,
feed, and nurtured her was getting beaten up by a man who would manipulate her into thinking it
was her fault. I then asked her, “I know that these incidences occurred when you were in middle
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school, but did it affect you in high school and/or college?” She then said that, it had affected her
tremendously throughout high school and college because she felt worthless. She continued on
saying that she was afraid of success and to assimilate into an academic discourse community
because she thought that others would want to treat her differently.
In the article, The Effects of Domestic Violence on Children explains that violence at
home effects students on different levels such as having fear, guilt, shame, depression, and anger.
A student then loses the ability to concentrate and their behavioral response includes acting out,
withdrawal, or anxiousness to please. The students in The Freedom Writer’s Diary don’t face
these challenges alone. Similarly, some students at PCC and anywhere else, go through the same
exact feelings. These challenges hold students back from becoming active and successful
members in an academic discourse community because they lack psychological ease. In Carol
Dweck’s article, The Perils and Promises of Praise, there are two kinds of mindsets: fixed and
growth. In a fixed mind set, individuals believe that their capabilities can only reach a certain
extent. While in a growth mindset, individuals believe in development and improvement in their
abilities. Students who experience violence at home have a fixed mindset because of the fact that
they feel their basic qualities aren’t good enough. Just like in the article The Effects of Domestic
Violence on Children, students feel the guilt which comes to hurt them in their academics and
ability to assimilate into an academic discourse community and then become more apt to having
health issues, poor judgment, and having social and emotional issues. This leads students on the
road to suffering in school. Many students then have the inability to handle pressure, which
result in the urge to drop out of school. When a student gets that urge it’s the end of the road,
they feel helpless and because they don’t want to ask for help, they drop out. The reason why
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many students don’t want to ask for help is because they get a sense that no one will be able to
relate to them and no one will be able to fix anything.
Individuals don’t realize that violence affects students throughout their life. Their serious
and long-lasting consequences they have to face every day is their physical and mental health.
For example, in a video called, Through Our Eyes: Children, Violence, and Trauma—
Introduction, provides first-hand accounts of children’s exposure to violence and how it directly
affected them throughout their life. One account that was presented was a man who at 10-years
old witnessed the murder of his mother and brother. Another account was a young Caucasian
woman who was physically and sexually abused at a very young age. The last account was a
Chinese woman who when she was a child witnessed individuals step on her brother, not caring
what condition he was in. They explain that the trauma that children witness is an
overwhelming event, which causes them to be terrified and their minds are wired to expect
danger everyday of their lives. These children who are students, mentally change because they
think that they’ll be the next one to die. It may seem ridiculous that at a young age they think that
particular way, but a student has the capacity to understand what is going on around them. A
young African American woman in the video explains that it makes you feel afraid and
vulnerable as a child because you feel stressed. A child feeling stressed? Yes, it may sound
absurd, but all of our brains have alarm systems and as I have said before, the brain is then wired
for danger because once you’ve experienced violence at home an individual isn’t able to
overcome the traumatic event. It begins to haunt them every single day. As they grow up, they
build this anger because they feel a range of anxieties and behavioral problems. When violence
occurs in a household it is challenging to move on because they don’t feel that they can talk to
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anyone. Other than thinking about the option of dropping out of school or not caring about
anything, many students then feel the urge to commit suicide because they feel helpless.
Students who suffer then as adults are more likely to fall under the host of problems that
they had when they were younger. They have to face the challenge of being stripped from who
they were before they were either mentally, physically, or sexually abused. Dinaw Mengestu, is
an immigrant who, “…had been stripped bare here in America, [his life] confined to small towns
and urban suburbs (170-175).” This directly correlates to violence at home because just like
Mengestu was stripped from his culture and memories, students are also stripped from who they
are, their memories, and the good times they had. They don’t feel comfortable in their own skin.
Mengestu was confined to a small environment and students who experience violence at home
also are confined to small areas. They are either trying to avoid going home or actually being at
home. The consequence is that students then fall prey to bringing in violence into their own
households when they grow up. Many articles around the world focus on women who have been
the prey to violence, but many don’t realize that a woman isn’t the only one who suffers
tremendously. In the article, Growing Up With Violence, explains that children suffer equally as
the abused because of the fact that they either witness it or experience it. To add on what I was
saying before about students dropping out of school, those who fall under the pressure can either
become substance abusers, pregnant teens, gun users, or become juvenile and/or adult criminals.
In essence, if a student is able to overcome all these obstacles they will be able to
successfully assimilate into the academic discourse community. These challenges do prevent
students from becoming active and successful members of an academic discourse community
because they emotionally, physically and mentally have to overcome tremendous challenges. In
addition, it is unfortunate that some students face these injustices, but in the end if they are able
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to take part in a discourse community, if they are able to take what they have gone through and
use it as a crucial weapon to define themselves as something greater. In the end they will be
successful at being a part of an academic discourse community that guide them and helps them
figure out who they are. Being from a violent home doesn’t have to hold an individual back from
becoming active in college or school in general, but it can give someone the strength to
overcome the obstacle and successfully assimilate.
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Works Cited
Anonymous. Personal interview. 20 Oct. 2014
Dweck, Carol S. "The Perils and Promises of Praise.” Educational Leadership. 65.2 (2007): 3439. Web 22 Oct. 2014.
"Growing Up With Violence." Love Our Children USA. Love Our Children USA, 28 Oct 2014.
Web. 16 Oct. 2014. <http://loveourchildrenusa.org/growingupwithviolence.php>.
Gruwell, Erin and the Freedom Writer’s. The Freedom Writers Diary: How A Teacher And 150
Teens Used Writing To Change Themselves And The World Around Them. New York:
Broadway Books, 2006. Print.
Mengestu, Dinaw. "Home at Last." The Writer's Presence: A Pool of Readings. 7th Ed. Donald
McQuade and Robert Atwan. New York: Bedford/St. Martin, 2012. 170-175. Print.
Office for Crime Victims. “Through Our Eyes: Children, Violence, and Trauma-Introduction.”
Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 27 Feb. 2013. Web. 16 Oct. 2014
"The Effects of Domestic Violence on Children." Domestic Violence Roundtable. SudburyWayland-Lincoln Domestic Violence Roundtable, 28 Oct. 2014. Web. 16 Oct. 2014.
<http://www.domesticviolenceroundtable.org/domestic-violence.html>.