Student Protests of Dress Code Marred by Violence

Students protesting the first day of an anti-gang dress code clashed with school officials and sheriff’s deputies in the Antelope Valley on Thursday, boycotting classes and attacking a patrol car, officials said.

Two students were arrested and two others were being sought.

The uproar coincided with similar protests on Los Angeles’ West Side.

In the Antelope Valley, students were angered by a ban on all but official school baseball caps and by wide-ranging authorization of school officials to prohibit any clothing regarded as gang-oriented.

At Antelope Valley High School in Lancaster, a crowd of about 200 student demonstrators who had boycotted classes rushed a sheriff’s sergeant who had detained four young men off campus, pelting his car with rocks and debris and chanting “Let them go,” deputies said.

The sergeant was questioning four adult gang members who had nothing to do with the demonstration, Sgt. Ron Shreves said.

A 16-year-old boy described as a leader of the demonstrators was arrested, Shreves said.

At Palmdale High School, an estimated 200 students staged a peaceful but noisy walkout for three hours.

But at Quartz Hill High School, a 16-year-old boy was arrested for threatening a teacher when school administrators began seizing banned baseball caps from students, Deputy Gil Arce said.

Assault and other charges will be filed against the two arrested students, and two others were being sought, Shreves said.

The protests reflected widespread student discontent with the dress code adopted last month by trustees of the Antelope Valley Union High School District. School officials began enforcing the code Wednesday.

On Los Angeles’ West Side, about 75 University High School students staged a similar protest Thursday, gathering on the school grounds and chanting “Hats, hats, hats” on the first day of a ban on headgear as “distracting” and symbolic of street gangs.

The hat ban at University High School was the first controversial decision of the school’s newly formed “shared decision-making council” composed of the principal, teachers, parents and community members.