Washington City Paper: Contents for Mar. 5

Headline: Incident No. 1113
Ballou Senior High School was used to bad days. And then came the day Thomas “T.J.” Boykin allegedly shot James “J-Rock” Richardson.

Cover Story

Thomas “T.J.” Boykin returned for his final year at Frank W. Ballou Senior High School last September with the simple goal of graduating. First, he needed a class schedule. But at Ballou, such schoolhouse basics couldn’t be taken for granted.

T.J., like about 100 members of Ballou’s student body, didn’t receive a schedule on the first day of school. Nor the second. Nor even the fifth. Administrators blamed a computer virus. Instead of sending the children into classrooms with their peers, the school warehoused them in the cafeteria.

So T.J.’s routine went like this: He woke up at 6:30 a.m. and boarded a Metrobus that would take him out of the Barry Farm Dwellings for the 15-minute ride to Ballou, in Congress Heights. Then he took his place at a lunch table. “I didn’t do anything,” T.J. says of his cafeteria limbo. “I waited around.”

T.J. kept hoping an administrator would pop into the cafeteria any minute with his schedule. By Week 2, the cafeteria scene had turned into a test of patience. No homework, no books, no pop quizzes. The curriculum consisted of playing Spades, eating Doritos, guzzling Mountain Dews, talking about football, shooting air hoops, wrestling, slapping high fives, gossiping, and running around. Each period came and went, marked only by the rotation of teachers charged with baby-sitting T.J. and the rest. There was little effort to turn the mess hall into a study hall.

T.J. usually just gravitated to a table, a pair of headphones, and discs of his own raps, such as “Look at Me Now” and “The Daily Thing.”... Continued

Issue of Mar. 5 - 11, 2004

News and Features

Headline: Incident No. 1113
Ballou Senior High School was used to bad days. And then came the day Thomas “T.J.” Boykin allegedly shot James “J-Rock” Richardson.
Cover Story By Jason CherkisSarah GodfreyJohn Metcalfe, Annys Shin and Chris Shott
Park Place
Luxe Northwest garage pushes the limits of the form.
The City By Mike DeBonis
Verbatim
From a sign outside the branch of the Adams National Bank on H Street NW in Chinatown:
The City By Mike DeBonis
Liquor in the Front
Nimby Tribunal By Josh Levin
Interested Parties
The Mail By Kevin Morton
The Home Front
The Mail By Thomas L. Seidman
Life as We Know It
The Mail By Michael “Cardinal Sin” Abarca