Students Use the Day to Voice Their Concerns About War

Forget for a moment that Raul Bogue is a 17-year-old high school senior and listen to the diplomatic reason he skipped school Tuesday.

“I say that defending Kuwait is important, but fighting Saddam Hussein will only give him more power in his own people’s minds,” Bogue said, explaining what prompted him and 100 of his Sweetwater High School classmates to stage an all-day war protest on their campus.

“If we become the enemy that (Hussein) tells his people we are, they’ll be behind him even more. But if we go on with the sanctions and (an Iraqi) mother sees her children starving because of what he is doing, then maybe they’ll be mad at him, not us.”

As he spoke, the National City teen-ager seemed completely unaware that he sounded more like a foreign policy analyst than a truant high schooler. But then, Tuesday was his first war protest, and he admitted his head was spinning.

He wasn’t alone. On Deadline Day in San Diego County, some of the most strident anti-war sentiments came out of the mouths of the very young.

Two high schools staged all-day protests. One middle-school class formally debated whether to go to war. And local draft counselors reported a flood of calls from worried college students and teen-agers--so many calls that they planned to hold a special seminar to train more counselors tonight in an attempt to accommodate the rush.

“We’ve heard from high school students and parents who want to know what their son--or possibly their daughter--might be facing,” said Rick Jahnkow, a draft counselor who works with a group called Project YANO, which counsels young people that there are non-military ways to serve their country. “We are getting our counselors lined up.”

Not all young people said they were critical of the U.S. buildup in the Middle East. On Tuesday, 60 honors eighth-graders at Del Dios Middle School in Escondido listened attentively as a former staff member of the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait described her harrowing 4 1/2 months as a hostage. Having heard that account, several said war was necessary.

“I think (war) will happen,” said Andrew Bird, 13. “It needs to be done. Saddam is killing and torturing people over there, and we can’t let him go on.”

Mimi Wang, 13, agreed. “If we don’t go to war now, then he might take over another country and do the same thing,” she said.

But others said they were frightened--for the troops overseas, for their family members and for themselves.

“I’m pretty scared because I don’t want all those people dying,” said Claire Stevens, 13. “I wish Saddam would surrender, because I don’t think he’d win.”

Katie Griffin, another Del Dios student, said, “We’re fighting over oil, and I don’t think people should lose their families for that.”

One group of sixth-graders at Woodrow Wilson Middle School in San Diego debated the pros and cons of war. As part of the assignment, social studies teacher Peter Brown said, each student had to be prepared to defend either side of the argument. Tuesday’s discussion led the kids to talk about their nightmares.

“I asked my class, did anybody have any unusual dreams last night,” Brown said. “One kid dreamed they were in the war and they’d been shot. Another dreamed he was in the middle of the desert and couldn’t get any water. Another kid dreamed the bombs came into his home. And another dreamed (the military) came into the classroom, tore his clothes off and put a uniform on him.”

At Helix High School in La Mesa, more than 75 sign-carrying students left their classes Tuesday and marched off the school grounds when Principal Douglas Smith told them they could not conduct a demonstration during school hours. At Helix, as at Sweetwater, officials said the protesting students would be asked to atone for their truancy by attending a four-hour class on a Saturday. Sweetwater Principal Louise C. Phipps said that, for many student demonstrators, the choice to cut class was not an easy one.

“Many of them are extremely good students, and (to be) a truant from class is a very big thing, so it’s a measure of how important this issue was to them,” Phipps said. “I felt strongly they needed to be encouraged to make a statement, but they also needed to accept responsibility for their actions.”

Students said that was a fair price to pay for the chance to speak their minds.

“If you believe in something, you have to give something up,” said Rocio Poriz, an 18-year-old Sweetwater senior who was among the protesters. “We knew what we were getting into. You have to suffer the consequences.”

Times staff writers Jonathan Gaw and Nora Zamichow contributed to this report.