School Logs Few Rodney King Complaints

Saddleback High School Principal Marylouise Ortega said Wednesday that Rodney G. King would be welcomed on campus again even though a handful of people called the school to say that King’s appearance Tuesday was not appropriate for schoolchildren.

By Wednesday afternoon, Ortega said she had received seven critical telephone messages from area residents. A half-dozen more calls were recorded at Santa Ana Unified School District, but the response has not come close to matching the furor resulting from King’s November visit to Tustin High School.

Ortega said the callers to Saddleback, none of whom were believed to be parents of schoolchildren there, complained that King was being held up as an undeserved hero to impressionable students.

“Those people might not feel that way if they had heard him speak,” Ortega said of King’s Tuesday visit to Saddleback. “He is a man in history. It’s too bad that we cannot sit down with each other and have an exchange of ideas.”

King’s videotaped beating in March, 1991, led to the trial of four police officers. The officers’ subsequent acquittal sparked widespread rioting last April in Los Angeles.

King’s school visits in Orange County have been described by his attorney, Milton C. Grimes, as vehicles for both enhancing his client’s image and educating young people.

In his hourlong program at Saddleback, attended only by students who had obtained written permission from their parents, King praised the civil rights accomplishments of Martin Luther King Jr., while emphasizing the importance of staying in school.

Sponsored by the school’s African-American Student Union, the after-school presentation in the Saddleback auditorium was closed to the public and reporters. Ortega said the event had been carefully planned during the past two weeks by the student union and school officials in an attempt to diffuse any of the negative fallout that resulted from King’s surprise appearance at Tustin two months ago.

On that occasion, Tustin school officials were deluged with telephone calls from irate parents and district residents who believed that King’s appearance was inappropriate because he is a controversial figure.

They also complained that Grimes, who is representing King in his pending civil lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department, used King’s appearance as a publicity stunt to benefit his client. Grimes brought King to the Tustin meeting reportedly without the knowledge of top school officials.

Although those who called Saddleback and the Santa Ana district offices expressed similar criticisms of King’s most recent appearance, the response did not approach the level experienced at Tustin.

Diane Thomas, Santa Ana schools’ public information officer, said callers to the district’s headquarters complained that King was not an appropriate role model for children.

“We responded that the district did not take a stand on whether Mr. King is or is not a role model,” Thomas said. “We pointed out that we simply assisted a student group (African-American Student Union) at Saddleback High in having a speaker the group said it wanted to hear. It was an after-school event that did not interfere with any classes.”