Boy Stabbed, 22 Suspended in Campus Racial Brawl : Schools: Escalating tensions at Fountain Valley High turn violent. One student is jabbed in head and ear with a pencil. ‘They wanted to fight a different race,’ the principal says.

Officials suspended 22 students at Fountain Valley High School after a campus melee prompted by escalating racial tensions between white and Asian-American students, police and school administrators said Friday.

Teachers and school officials broke up the brawl, which erupted shortly after the start of school Thursday, police said. One 17-year-old student who was stabbed in the head and ear with a pencil was treated at a local hospital and released, administrators and students said.

The trouble began with a verbal confrontation between two students, one a Caucasian and the other Asian-American, Ernst and students said. After some shouting, other students joined in and the brawl began. It was unclear who stabbed the 17-year-old student, who was not identified.

Some students said Friday that racial tension at the school has existed for many years. They and Principal Gary D. Ernst said the problem has increased in recent months, as some fistfights have broken out between the races.

“The kids just wanted to fight,” Ernst said. “They wanted to fight a different race. Over the last week there have been a series of incidents . . . between a small group of Anglos and Asians, about 30 (people) in all.”

Police, who made frequent passes in marked patrol cars throughout the day, identified several suspects in the stabbing, ranging in age from 15 to 17 years old. But they have made no arrests, Sgt. Lee Pepka said.

School officials will re-interview the 22 suspended students to determine whether to expel them, Ernst said. Officials will take into account whether the students have been in trouble before at school.

Students and school administrators said the current tension stems from the changing demographics of the campus. Forty percent of the high school’s students are Asian-American or Latino--double the number six years ago, Ernst said.

“The tensions result because of one kid not knowing who that other kid is,” he said.

Khanh Phan, a 16-year-old freshman who was in the fight, said some white students have made racial slurs and told him to “go back to Vietnam.”’

In February, a group of about 25 staff members, students and parents formed a human relations committee at Fountain Valley High School, to help reconcile potentially volatile situations, Hagen said.

And on Friday, teachers held classroom discussions about bigotry, Ernst said.

The 22 suspensions were the most in one day in the district in the past several years, said David Hagen, supervisor of the Huntington Beach Union High School District, which includes Fountain Valley High School.

Police, district and campus administrators said violent incidents on the sprawling, 2,600-student campus are rare.

The last significant incident occurred last October when a 17-year-old student was assaulted outside an administration building. Authorities arrested four men, aged 19 to 22, who were not students.