150 at Ventura High School Seek Student Union for Whites : Education: The petition drive follows the creation of a black club. Some fear increased racial tensions.

About 150 students at Ventura High School have signed a petition calling for a white student union to promote the study of European history, a practice they say is lacking in classrooms on campus.

The request follows the recent formation of the Black Student Union, and some white students view the formation of a second union as a way of obtaining racial equality on the campus of 1,800 students.

“I don’t think you can have one without the other. I think you’d be a hypocrite and a racist,” said 18-year-old Darryl Gunderson, a student government representative who will vote on the issue today.

But minority students, black community activists and some white students have criticized attempts to form the white club, saying it will serve only to increase racial tension at the school in the wake of an attack on a black student last week.

Zaylore Stout, the 17-year-old president of the Black Student Union, was leaving school at the end of the day Oct. 17 when he was accosted by a man who yelled a racial slur, got out of a car and slugged him, he said.

Stout told the school board on Tuesday that he did not feel safe on campus, and said a white student union would only add to the problem.

“Even if their intentions aren’t racist, it will end up being a racist group,” said Stout, one of about 45 black students at the school.

Recently, a white student group at a predominantly Latino high school in Anaheim formed a European-American club, raising protests from minority activists that the club might be a haven for racists. Students in the group, however, said it was formed because at their ethnically diverse school they are minorities.

But at Ventura High School, whites far outnumber other ethnic groups, school official Lanie Springer said. According to enrollment figures from 1990, about 1,300 of the school’s nearly 1,800 students were white, about 380 were Latino and 43 were black.

“They (white students) don’t need a club,” Stout said.

Assistant Principal Helena Reaves said the student government will review the proposed constitution for the white student union, vote on it and then send the item to the faculty cabinet, which will make a final decision on whether the club is formed.

“I really don’t know all the particulars yet,” Reaves said.

One of the students who started circulating the petition, Casey White, 17, said he wants to create a forum for discussing his Anglo-Saxon heritage with other whites and blacks. He acknowledged having friends who are members of the Skinheads, a highly factionalized group, some of whose members have white-supremacist beliefs. But he said he is not one of them.

During an interview, White said he held no animosity toward blacks who have organized on campus, but added that students should not be allowed to wear black-power shirts or T-shirts with pictures of Malcolm X on them.

“I’d like to wear an Adolf Hitler shirt to be equal,” said White, clad in a pair of steel-toe boots that are often worn by skinheads. “He’s one person that stood for the Aryan race, and that’s part of Europe’s culture.”

White said the white student union would explore issues in European history that are not talked about in class, such as rare music and Nordic explorers.

Speaking before the Ventura school board Tuesday, Ventura County NAACP President John R. Hatcher III said the problem of racism in schools is deeper than student groups and must be dealt with on the home front.

Hatcher called for a blue-ribbon panel to talk to students and make a finding about racism in Ventura schools.

School officials said they are investigating the charges of racism and discrimination and have asked Ventura police to step up patrols at the high school.

Meanwhile, black students on the open campus have confined themselves to school grounds during the lunch hour, citing safety concerns rising out of racial tensions.

“We don’t go off campus alone now,” said Chandra Crudup, a 17-year-old black student. “If the student body approves the Aryan student union, or whatever they want to call it, tension will escalate.”

Crudup said white students have complained since the Black Student Union formed in September.

“They feel insecure, like ‘Where’s the club for me?’ ” Crudup said.

The high school campus is home to several clubs for minority students, including a student association promoting Mexican-Amercian heritage, a multicultural organization called the Rainbow Coalition and the Black Student Union.