Kent Merritt

I reflect on this more so now than I did before.  When Burley was shut down and everyone went to Lane High School, there was a lot of discontent, a lot of fights, a lot of arguments.  It was not a comfortable environment.  But reflecting back on that, I can understand why that existed.  Because Burley had its identity.  They had their clubs.  They had their social networks.  They had all the school-supported activities and that sort of thing.  And they had their leaders in those positions.  Then they came over to Lane, and they had none of that.  They were completely shut out of all of those organizations.  I guess they didn’t express it like that at the time.  And in addition to that, the administration had no clue how to deal with it.  It didn’t appear that they thought it out at all.  I guess they thought or felt that the Black students coming over to Lane would be bettering themselves by that association, they’d be happy, hunky-dory about that.  And it was anything but.  But in retrospect that’s probably why.  If they had something that they controlled or they were a part of, that’s one thing.  But you’re shut out of everything.  You don’t have anything to say that you are in control of.  It was awful from an administrative standpoint.