Students, Laguna Officials Discuss Flyers : Education: High school government leaders tell city about positive aspects at campus where racist handbills were distributed.

Several Laguna Beach High School students and staff members met with city officials Friday to discuss the racist flyers that were distributed on campus earlier this week and programs to promote racial harmony.

Four student leaders spent an hour at City Hall with the police chief, mayor, school principal and school activities director, after student government President Sarah O’Rourke received Principal Barbara Callard’s permission to set up the first-ever meeting.

Sometime after school Tuesday, someone went to the high school’s outdoor atrium where 300 lockers are located and stuffed each with a flyer that Assistant Principal Tim Sullivan described as a “disgusting, racial, white supremacist diatribe” against Latinos.

O’Rourke said she told officials that most students are still concerned about the incident. She said she wanted the city to know about positive aspects of the school amid a flurry of emotions the flyer had caused. She also requested funding to have the theater group Stop-Gap present interactive performances that aim to stop racial stereotypes and prejudice.

The school’s activities director Dawn Mirone told city officials she thought they might have a negative view of the school after reading recent newspaper stories that explored racial tensions on campus.

“We wanted to let the City Council know what positive things we have done” to promote racial harmony, she said. “We thought (the stories) made students look like ‘rich white snobs,’ in the words of one student.”

Mayor Ann Christoph said the city did not have that impression. “We think it’s a good school,” she said.

Meanwhile, students and faculty members on campus expressed anger and concern over the flyers. Corey Soria, a 17-year-old senior whose father is from South America, said, “I was pretty outraged that someone would do something that low.”

“The reaction of the school has been one of hurt and disgust,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan said he suspects the culprit is part of a white supremacist organization that is recruiting new members after reading about the school.

But so far, police said, no suspects have emerged.

“We don’t have any solid leads at his point, but sometimes these people come forward themselves . . . to proclaim that they are the ones behind it,” said Police Chief Neil J. Purcell Jr.

Purcell said the distribution of the flyers was “a hate crime.” However, he said that unless the school asks for it, there are no plans to add extra patrols around the campus, which is often open in the evenings for adult education classes and sporting events.

What the school is asking for now is less attention from the media, campus officials said.

“To keep stirring it up is what the outside group (responsible for the flyers) wants to happen,” Sullivan said.

Callard agreed. “The students are real anxious to return to normalcy and privacy,” she said.