Although police and school officials say they think gangs do not have a major presence at Berkeley High School, they admit the kids would know most about student membership in West Side Berkeley or H2O Front Berkeley—the two most prominent Berkeley gangs.

“Even in the junior high you’ll pick up notebooks and they’ll have H2O written all over it,” said Berkeley police Sgt. Patricia Delaluna, a gang expert. “The kids know better than anybody who’s all involved.”

However, even students are in discrepancy about the presence of gangs. Two juniors at Berkeley High, Rafi Susman and Michael Salaverry, said they don’t think gangs exist in their school.

“I don’t worry about that, not at Berkeley High,” Salaverry said.

His friend said even though there aren’t gangs at the school, there still is criminal activity.

“There’s gang-like activity but they’re not labeled as gangs,” Susman said. “I think here it’s more about ridiculous individuals than ridiculous gangs.”

However, other students are positive of the presence of gang-like groups, which sometimes engage in criminal behavior but do not label themselves as “gangs.”

“There’s gangs, but sometimes they’re called cliques,” said Cervon Rogers, a freshman at Berkeley High. “Then they say the ‘turf’ they’re from, they do signs, they target each other.”

The cliques, also known as “turfs” or “squads,” are based on neighborhoods.

“You just need to be from there to be in,” said Rodrick Rogers, a junior at Berkeley High. “I don’t think you need to do anything to be in the gang.”

Another student at Berkeley High, freshman Morgan Mitchell, said she has heard of some cliques that require criminal activity for initiation.

“Sometimes people say you have to beat somebody up, rob a store, rob a bank, do something big to make them see the power that you have,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell, who used to be in an 11-member “squad” called Fuck Your Drama, didn’t have to perform any crimes to be initiated. But she decided to leave the group because it didn’t benefit her.

“It was just my best friend decided to make a clique,” she said. “It wasn’t significant, I didn’t gain anything from it.”

Mitchell joined her clique because her friends were in it, but some students are recruited because their family members are in the gang.

“It could just be you grew up in one, or your partner grew up in one so you decided to be in one,” said Ronald Floyd, a junior at Berkeley High.

While adults usually say that students join cliques out of insecurity problems, students said that it is perfectly logical to join a clique for social reasons.

“To get friends, that’s mostly the main reason,” said Mitchell. “Street credit.”

Floyd pointed out that some students join cliques “to be more protected and have people behind your back.”

Whatever the motive is behind gang-like groups, students seemed to be in agreement that the school does not and should not intervene, saying that teachers rarely bring up the topic in the classroom.

“It’s not something that the teachers and administration should get involved with because that will just make the kids want to rebel even more,” Mitchell said. “It may be a big issue in the future but right not it’s not.”