Underground Paper Gets Gompers Pupil in Hot Water

A student at Gompers Secondary School will be disciplined for distributing an underground newspaper on campus that criticizes the school for favoring white students over minority students and calls Principal Marie Thornton the “dreaded warden” for not letting students sit on the grass.

But school district administrators said late Monday that they will not suspend junior Benjamen Hanes, as Hanes was told when he was sent home Monday.

The paper featured five articles about student life at Gompers, including: mild criticism of Thornton for fencing off all grassy areas from students; criticism of the volleyball team coach for an alleged lack of skills, and allegations of teacher favoritism toward white students who bus to the science-math-computer magnet school at the expense of the predominantly black and Latino neighborhood students, who constitute a large majority at the Southeast San Diego school.

Hanes was sent home from school Monday to talk with his father about his role as editor of the Mind Revolution--and his refusal to tell Vice Principal Eloise Aitken the names of four co-writers. The move should not be interpreted as a “formal suspension” because that would require special paperwork, Aitken said.

Hanes, a high-achieving student who heads the Gompers debate team and served on its mock-trial competition team this spring, will be allowed to attend his last day of school today and take his final exams in Spanish and English, Aitken said.

Although Aitken said that Hanes and his father were told that suspension and a yearlong loss of extracurricular activities next year were possible punishments, she added that nothing definite was decided when the junior was sent home.

Assistant Supt. Al Cook said late Monday that “suspension and not taking final exams is not appropriate at this time,” and that he had talked with Aitken and Thornton to make certain they told the Hanes of that position.

“I can’t say what discipline there will be in (September) because I and (district legal counsel) Tina Dyer have not yet reviewed the situation and given guidance to (the school) on an appropriate action to take, and I’m not going to overreact,” Cook said.

“I don’t want to say the school overreacted, but I am terribly concerned that suspension and not taking the exams would be excessive.”

Hanes is bused to the school from Pacific Beach under the district’s voluntary integration program. “I can say that there will not be a (ban) on extracurricular activities because of a student not giving the names” of co-writers, Cook said.

Aitken said the school, together with Cook and Dyer, will review whether Hanes violated district policy concerning student free speech by distributing a non-official school newspaper on campus without the editors being identified by name. She also said that the paper may have violated district rules prohibiting newspapers that either libel individuals or use profanity.

“But we are still reviewing the situation,” she said, adding that “it is not in my nature to be punitive. . . . I want the students to learn and grow from an incident.”

Underground newspapers have surfaced from time to time at Gompers, which has been in the news for years because of district efforts to improve education for Latino and black students there. For years, neighborhood parents complained that the white students who come to the school for the special courses were given a better curriculum than resident minority students.

The school is in the third year of a continuing program to increase neighborhood student achievement without losing the attendance of white students, whose parents in many cases have withdrawn their children because of fears of a watering-down of course work.

Hanes said Monday that Aitken told him to “go home” after he was called into the office and asked for the names of his co-writers. The school traced his connection to the paper because he had listed the private postal box number of his father’s business for students to use in sending contributions or comments.

“I was not given any other reason. But I did overhear Mrs. Thornton talking to a counselor about the fact she thought that the newspaper was libelous,” Hanes said.

Hanes said the article about the lawns talked of the many students who refer to Thornton as “our dreaded warden” because of all the fencing, “which makes us feel like we are in a cage.”

And he said the volleyball adviser, Reed Moore, is called “totally inadequate as a coach” in the article on volleyball, one of the two sports that the school now offers its students.

“Also, the article on education says that the gifted students are getting a better education than the regular students, and that the junior-high students are learning only how to achieve” in academic courses without being encouraged to try art or otherwise express themselves creatively, Hanes said.

“There was also a general article on racism and one on patriotism that says that right now there is an excess of patriotism,” he said.

Hanes conceded that he distributed the papers on campus, four or five at a time. “But, if I had put my name on it, I would have gotten suspended, probably under some other rule,” he said.