Booing Furor at Arts High

In response to “School Furor Mirrors L.A.’s Struggles With Diversity,” May 30:

I applaud the officials of L.A. County High School for the Arts for allowing the outspoken play parodying Gov. Pete Wilson, but am equally abhorred by their reaction to the protest of teacher Don Bondi.

Bondi’s booing of the play and the expression of his opinion in calling it “tasteless” are deserving of protection. Bondi’s actions were an exercise of free speech, just as the play was. It seems the school is promoting a double standard and in the process presenting an unreal view of the criticism that is to be expected when students eventually produce a work in the “real” world.

The problem of diversity is not a racial or ethnic one. The challenge is in learning to allow opinions to be expressed that are unpalatable to those in authority.

WILLIAM POE

Hollywood

After reading your article, I couldn’t help but wonder why it wasn’t school board member Maria Elena Gaitan--instead of Bondi--who lost her job.

Bondi’s verbal objection to a questionable theater piece drew cries of racism from Gaitan. To accuse any person--let alone a public educator--of racism on the basis of his opinions of an artwork is not only reckless and irresponsible but shows an utter contempt for the real race problems that face our troubled society. Bondi might have waited until the production was over to voice his opinion, but I strongly doubt Gaitan would have reacted any differently had he done so.

As a student of music, I have long believed that one of the most important qualities in a teacher of the arts is his willingness to be honest in his judgment of students’ work. Without such openness, high artistic standards cannot be maintained.

Gaitan and others like her flippantly slap the racist label on anyone who differs with their political agenda. I’m not sure which is worse--that someone could lose his job over his reaction to a student play, or that someone like Gaitan is in a position to have him fired.

JOHN LONG

Los Angeles

The reassignment of Bondi, chairman of the dance department at Arts High, is an outrageous assault on freedom of speech, creative freedom and the arts. It is also a vicious attack on a compassionate, caring artist/teacher who set high standards and encouraged excellence in his students.

As a parents of a young African American dancer who graduated last year from Arts High, we know Bondi and this school well. It is a jewel in the Los Angeles County school system, a school with a zero drop-out rate, a school with an extraordinary ethnic mix, a school where students are so highly motivated that some travel more than two hours twice a day to attend classes, a school that challenges young people to develop their creative talents, to think for themselves and to form character-building skills and discipline that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

It is the Arts High teachers like Don Bondi who create the nourishing environment where students can express themselves openly and freely, without fear of reprisal, as they explore themselves and develop their own voice, their own unique artistic vision. To squelch a teacher for expressing his opinion sets an example that contradicts everything that the arts, education and, indeed, democratic institutions stand for.

Bondi’s enemies may be well-meaning, but they should learn to control their totalitarian impulses.

MARY BATTEN and ED BLAND

Los Angeles

Members of AHORA are highly disturbed by the past and more recent conduct of Don Bondi, and about the failure of the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts to integrate racial and ethnic minorities into the mainstream of their curriculum and into professional positions. We are particularly distressed about the price students of all cultures have paid for this institutional failure, and note that art is political, especially when people of color are excluded and are therefore silenced.

Without a doubt, Bondi should be immediately released from his position for unprofessional conduct, failure to act as a teacher when booing young students as they attempt to gain self-confidence and self-esteem in the honored art form of the theater. We recognize that Gov. Wilson is not the issue, nor is booing. The issue is that Bondi did this while employed as a teacher. He abused his position when he engaged in an attempt to censor, and set a costly and negative example for white students who should be learning to live in a multicultural world.

ROSA M. HUERTA-WILLIAMSON

Coordinator, AHORA, A Latina Feminist

Organization of Artists

and Community Activists

Thank you for your excellent article about Bondi’s trouble at Arts High. This is a disturbing illustration of the negative aspect of multiculturalism. I particularly like Rudy Perez’s comments: “Being an art school means being different from other public schools. It should have nothing to do with race. It should be about individuals. When I grew up in New York . . . we all considered ourselves Americans.”

MADERE M. OLIVAR

Los Angeles