Most teenagers who want to be in the hard-core lifestyle know that MCHS is not the place, Young said. Bietry does not deny that drugs can be found in his school. ''To say there are not drugs in Michigan City is foolish, because there are,'' he said. Guns, gangs and knives During the school year, a gun deal was exposed at the high school. A student offered to sell another student a sawed-off shotgun and brought the weapon to school. When word reached the office, the gun was confiscated outside the building and the students were arrested.
Knives seem to be more common.
Naifeh said he confiscated more than a dozen knives during the year. Another danger, Iacona said, is the proliferation of gangs. Before the 1995-96 school year, Iacona had spent her career at the high school level. She was taken aback by the number of junior high students involved in gang activity. It is a young and impressionable age and Iacona said gangs target the group for recruitment.