Students Seek Causes of Brawl : Melee: Under tightened security, classes at Gardena High debate roots of fight between blacks and Latinos that erupted after performance urging racial harmony.

Students gathered in hallways, and teachers opened their classrooms to spirited debates at Gardena High School on Friday to make sense of the forces that sparked a brawl between hundreds of black and Latino students the day before.

The campus was unusually quiet, with less than half of the school’s 2,800 students in attendance. But signs of tension remained as black and Latino students discussed the incident in separate clusters during breaks.

Officers from the Los Angeles, Gardena and Los Angeles Unified School District police departments patrolled the school and its perimeter, asking students found wandering off campus to return to class.

In addition, more than two dozen youth counselors and psychologists were at the school to talk to students.

In a statement over the school’s public address system, Principal Catherine Lum described the fighting as very shocking and asked the students to look inside themselves to determine whether they had acted fairly and responsibly toward their peers.

“You are here for an education,” Lum said. “You are not here to abuse each other or show disrespect for a person or group. You are not here to verbally or physically attack anyone.”

The melee was ignited during a lunch break Thursday, minutes after student performers completed their annual “International Assembly,” a program that promotes racial harmony. The show featured music and dancing from Africa, Latin America and Asia, as well as a pageant of students dressed in native costumes.

Initially, the students appeared to enjoy the show, cheering and applauding thunderously for the dances representing their own heritage. But pride turned to anger when some black and Latino students began booing the dances of other cultures. When the program ended, the fighting began.

Five students were treated in hospital emergency rooms for cuts and bruises, but all were released the same day. Another 20 to 25 students were treated at the school.

In the aftermath, several parents vowed to withdraw their children from Gardena High.

“I can’t in good conscience send him back there,” said Susan Garrison, whose 15-year-old son was struck in the ear.

But Linda Lamkin, president of the school’s Parent Teacher Student Assn., has been advising parents to keep their children in the school.

“It’s easy to say ‘There was a fight, we’re leaving.’ But that is not going to solve the problem,” she said.

In a composition class Friday, seniors debated the cause of the brawl with psychologist Tonya Richardson.

Michael Jackson, 17, said he believes that the assembly unintentionally fostered misunderstandings among racial groups.

“I think before we went in there, we should have had some background on other cultures,” Jackson said. “Nobody was prepared to go in there. Nobody knows enough about their own culture, let alone enough to go in there to learn to respect another’s culture.”

School Board President Warren Furutani, who visited the campus Friday morning, said district administrators and crisis intervention specialists will remain on campus next week in an attempt to understand the underlying conflicts that led to the fight.