Assembly on Cultural Unity Erupts Into Racial Brawl : Education: Five students are hospitalized and 20 others are hurt after fighting breaks out between about 400 black and Latino students at Gardena High.

Five students were hospitalized and at least 20 others suffered cuts and bruises Thursday when a school assembly held to promote cultural harmony dissolved into widespread fighting among scores of black and Latino students at Gardena High School.

The brawl erupted on the lunch patio about 12:30 p.m., just moments after the final curtain was drawn on the school’s annual International Assembly, which included music and dancing from more than 20 nationalities and cultures.

The fighting, which school police said involved about 400 students, continued in sporadic bursts for nearly an hour, even after more than three dozen police officers from the Los Angeles Unified School District, Gardena and Los Angeles police departments arrived.

Five students were taken to Memorial Hospital of Gardena with injuries ranging from cuts and bruises to a possible concussion. All were in stable condition and expected to be released by the end of the day, said hospital administrator George M. Rooth. Among those hospitalized were a girl who had fainted and a boy who had suffered a seizure.

No arrests were made.

Although school officials denied that any weapons were involved, at least one student, Au-Trese Patterson, 15, said she had been stabbed with a knife in the knee. She was treated by the school nurse.

The fighting was blamed on everything from campus overcrowding to racial tensions among black and Latino students. The school was reorganized this year to begin accepting ninth-graders, boosting enrollment by nearly one-third. About 40% of the school’s 2,800 students are black, 35% are Latino and 15% are Asian.

Social studies teacher Maureen O’Donnell, a representative of the United Teachers of Los Angeles, said teachers have been complaining since August that the school needs more counselors and support staff to handle the additional students, but that their concerns were not heard. As a result, she said, the students have been “difficult to control.”

“The wonder of it all is not that this thing happened, but that it didn’t happen sooner,” O’Donnell said. “It’s been chaotic here from Day One and we’ve been racking our brains to see what we can do about it.”

School Board President Warren Furutani said there is no doubt that as a result of state and local budget cutbacks classes are larger and the teaching and support staffs have been reduced. However, he said, crowding alone did not spark the tumult at Gardena.

The conflicts between black and Latino students, Furutani said, cannot be “predicated on just class size. (It is) predicated on the issue of what is going on all over the city.”

A similar incident between black and Latino students occurred recently at Chatsworth High School, he said. And tensions had been evident previously on the Gardena campus, he said. The National Conference of Christians and Jews has a brotherhood and sisterhood camp on the Gardena campus.

The brawl was foreshadowed during the assembly, which featured a pageant of students modeling costumes from various cultures. Large groups of black and Latino students began cheering loudly for their own cultures but not for those of others. It wasn’t until the students filed onto the patio for lunch recess, however, that the fighting began.

Black and Latino students accused each other of sparking the fights by failing to show enough respect for the music and dancing of their respective cultures during the assembly.

“The Mexicans were showing disrespect,” Letoya Pettus, 14, who is black, said on the school’s front lawn. “They began shouting ‘Mexico’ while our people were dancing. . . . It started a riot and everybody just started hitting, punching and kicking.”

But Latino student Miranda Rivas, 16, said it was the other way around: “They (black students) are always agitating fights with the Mexican people. When we want to celebrate our culture, they put us down.”

Principal Catherine Lum said it was an oversimplification to describe the fighting as “a black-brown confrontation.”

“We have tried very hard to build good race relations,” Lum said. “I can’t believe that something that is meant to improve race relations could be the cause of this. I think the problem is a lot of misguided enthusiasm.”

Investigators with the district’s Police Department are trying to determine whether gang rivalries sparked the melee, she said.

Officials said they will not cancel a series of multicultural events scheduled for the Gardena campus throughout the week, but will have additional security today.

Times staff writers Michele Fuetsch and Lisa Omphroy contributed to this report.