Silence Won’t Rid High School of Its Problems

Bonnie Maspero, the principal of Westminster High School, has asked her students not to contribute to violence. That is, she has asked them not to talk to outsiders, especially the press, about the latest clashes between students of different races from the school.

It didn’t work, but it was an interesting try.

Reporters sensationalize, the principal told her students over the school’s public address system. They aren’t interested in showing issues in the best light, she said, because those kind of stories don’t sell.

“They are not interested in the long-term solutions to our problems here at school.”

Bonnie Maspero believes, or she says she does, that the reason a group of armed Latino students jumped a group of Asians the other day was because the media had reported on an earlier stabbing of a Latino kid.

I have heard this line of reasoning before. And it has never made less sense.

I wrote about Westminster High School once before. This is why Bonnie Maspero is no fan of mine. I will strip the essence of that column, which ran in July, down to its bones.

A 14-year-old Westminster boy, honor student, sort of skinny, with braces on his teeth, was afraid to enroll at Westminster High.

He and his younger brother had been attacked, apparently at random, by two boys who went to the school. The brothers had been riding their bikes near Westminster High; the younger boy was hit with a pellet gun.

The boys’ parents were worried. They cited problems at Westminster with gangs, with drugs, with crime on the streets nearby. They asked the school district if their older son could attend Marina, an easy bike ride from their house, instead. They said parents should have the right to choose what school their children attend.

The district said no in every way it could.

Bonnie Maspero told me the parents were overreacting, that they should send their son to Westminster and help make it great. Then she suggested that this parental choice issue was just a ruse. She said it boiled down to issues of prejudice and bigotry.

(Asians and Latinos make up more than half of the 2,450 students at Westminster High. Whites, once a majority, are now 38% of the whole.)

So I wrote about it all, and the letters and calls poured in. Many thought I described the situation, and the larger issues, in a straightforward way. They thought it was good that a few pieces of dirty laundry were flapping in the wind.

Many others, however, thought I had not only maligned a high school, but an entire community as well. Some people called me a racist, I suppose because I brought up the point that different ethnic groups don’t always get along.

One reader, a former teacher at Westminster High, called to say that by writing that column I was almost challenging the kids to act up. This reader and I disagreed.

Months later, this broader difference in perspective--about what makes for reputable journalism, about good intentions versus good public relations, about confronting problems or just hoping they’ll go away--remains.

I liken it to the debate over the Reagan Administration’s “quiet diplomacy” policy. Was it a way to get things done behind closed doors or simply a facile excuse to do nothing at all?

Which is why I gave Bonnie Maspero a call the other day. I’d read her comments in regard to the latest violence, one day saying ethnic tensions were to blame, the next day saying that wasn’t so, that it was reporters who were magnifying the incidents beyond scale.

When I talked to her, she said a clash of cultures was a cause, but so were socioeconomics, the glorification of gangs and the general problems of teen-agers growing up.

“We anticipated issues relating to the kinds of students we have,” she said. “We know our community. We know what is going on.”

She added that five Westminster High students arrested in the incidents are in the process of being expelled from school. She said the rest of the student body was told about this in three languages: English, Spanish and Vietnamese.

Then I went over to Westminster High myself; Bonnie Maspero had invited me in. (Other reporters were told the campus was closed to them.)

The campus was quiet, students were in class. Police were there too.

The principal led me into a class of honor students, song leaders and members of the student government. It was mostly girls: whites, Latinos, Vietnamese and maybe other ethnic groups too. The racial mix clearly was unimportant here.

The kids told me that Westminster was getting a bad rap, that the media twists the truth, that only bad news makes it to print or on the air.

“We are being portrayed as a war ground,” said one girl.

“I’m as white as can be,” said another, “and, see, I’m not afraid!”

“There’s racial tension, but you can find it anywhere,” said a third.

Then I went out on my own and talked to other students just as class had let out. Most weren’t shy about speaking out. I’m not going to talk about the gang boasts, or the racist comments, that I heard.

But they were there.

One Vietnamese boy told me this: “I guess it’s the way the world is. People don’t get along.”

And I think that’s true. This is life today. Kids, and adults, can act like jerks. They can call each other names, then maybe bring out a fist, or something more permanent, to bring their point home. Westminster is certainly not alone.

But as the latest flare-ups of racial tension show, all the faceless maladies we hear about--poverty, gangs, ignorance, a lack of self-esteem--can form an explosive mix. Which is why, now more than ever, we need to talk it out--among ourselves and in the press.

And for those of you who are wondering what happened with the freshman who was afraid to attend Westminster High, his mother says she is happy he is not there.

The school board never did approve his request to attend Marina. But after the family hired a lawyer to toughen up a doctor’s opinion that attending Westminster would be harmful to their son, the school board said he could attend another district school 12 miles from his home.

The family said no.

The child has since transferred to Pacifica High, in the Garden Grove Unified School District. It is closer to his home and he is doing well.