Abe makes students wrestle with their bad behavior

World History and AP Government teacher Kirk Abe doesn’t like giving students detention.

Instead, Abe — an enthusiastic wrestling fan — began the year by sending students to observe wrestling practice as discipline for repeatedly breaking class rules, most typically for using cellphones during class time. The hope was that students would be so intrigued that they would join the small team.

Although senior wrestler William Sabato has never gone through Abe’s unique punishment firsthand, he says that wrestling is  more interesting option than traditional punishments.

“It’s nice to have more exposure for the wrestling team,” Sabato said. “Wrestling is much more fun, and you never know if you will end up liking the sport.”

But despite Abe’s good intentions, few if any students joined the team because of Abe’s creative punishment. So Abe put another idea into action. Instead of sending students to detention, Abe, as the Democracy Matters club adviser and as someone who believes that students should be informed about politics, now sends wrongdoers to Democracy Matters club meetings.

“Some of the students actually liked [the club] and stayed,” Abe said. “At least they have something of substance that they are exposed to.”

This particular punishment has not considerably affected the Democracy Matters club numbers, much like the wrestling practice punishment. But Democracy Matters co-president senior Surya Murthy said Abe’s punishment was not completely ineffective, and was likely created as a “different atmosphere” for students to gain knowledge from club meetings.

Regardless of the impact the punishment has had on Democracy Matters club and the wrestling team, Abe strongly believes that detention should be a useful time that students can use to expand their knowledge.

“If you sit around [in detention] it might as well be productive, interesting and maybe something you learn from,” Abe said.