Prop. 187 Fuels a New Campus Activism : Education: For the past two weeks, students have been walking out of school to protest the anti-illegal-immigration measure. Not since the late 1960s has an issue so coalesced Latino youths.

Motivated by rage and adrenaline and, yes, the desire to cut class, students throughout Los Angeles County have been walking out of schools by the hundreds during the past two weeks, protesting Proposition 187, a ballot measure they perceive as disrespectful of their very genes.

Monday morning at Paramount High School, students were filled with elation and gossip from Friday’s march against the controversial immigration initiative. The march prompted the strongest law enforcement response so far to the uprisings: stingball grenades thrown by sheriff’s deputies into a crowd of about 450 teen-agers and adults.

“It was during (morning) assembly that we all just walked out,” junior Martin Hidalgo recalled, smiling at the fresh memory. “People were talking about it (walking out) in the back of the room and then we just went. . . . It was all Latinos. We were all together.”

Not since the East Los Angeles “blowouts” of 1968, when more than 1,000 students marched from their classrooms to expose substandard education, has an issue so coalesced local Latino students. Under Proposition 187, undocumented students would no longer qualify for a free public education.

“Young students are very moralistic; they deal in what is fair,” said Rudy Acuna, professor of Chicano studies at Cal State Northridge. “This proposition is clear-cut racism to them, and it’s clear-cut that it’s about them too.”

The student protests continued Monday at several campuses, including Reseda High School, where administrators and teachers joined about 200 students in an early morning march, provided a bullhorn, then held a lunchtime debate on the anti-illegal-immigration measure.

At Reseda as at other schools, Latinos were joined by a few students of other races and ethnicities who shared their concerns about the ballot measure.

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Last week at Marshall Fundamental Secondary School in Pasadena, Armenian immigrant Serob Zetilyn, 16, was among 200 students who walked out.

“I’ve got a lot of friends who will have to quit school if Proposition 187 passes because they’re illegal,” Zetilyn said. “Plus classes will be smaller and some teachers will get fired. I want people to know that students disagree with this.”

From Pasadena to Long Beach, Reseda to South Gate, some who have walked out are openly proud of their newfound activism while others fear recrimination from school administrators. But most share a basic understanding of why they so vehemently oppose the measure that would limit illegal immigrants’ access to public services--including education--and why they are willing to speak with their feet.

Proposition 187, the marchers say, is an insult to their parents, their ancestors, their friends and neighbors. This, they say, opens the door to discrimination against them just because they are brown.

“This is mostly a Latino school and everyone’s proud of their heritage--they want to defend it,” said Vicky Velasco, a 15-year-old sophomore at Paramount, where, during the morning footrace to class, teen-age chatter slips fluidly between English and Spanish.

At Huntington Park High School, Stephanie Bernal and her friends are surprised to find themselves gathering before class and during lunch breaks to discuss such heavy topics as politics, lobbying and social activism.

Bernal likes to call herself a “mixed chocolate swirl.” Half Latino, half Anglo, she has had only fleeting and apolitical contact with Mexico--the land of her mother’s family. But now Bernal, a senior, is among those organizing her school’s anti-187 movement and reveling in her ancestry.

“Even though we’re worried about what happens if it (Proposition 187) passes, it feels great right now just to be doing something about it,” said Bernal, who helped plan four recent walkouts, the most recent last Thursday. “When we get together to talk about it, we speak Spanish and just feel good about being Mexican.”

At a variety of campuses, student plans already are in the works to continue the protests--which began in Pomona Oct. 12--during the weeks before the vote and to stage a student sickout before the Nov. 8 election.

Who is behind the efforts remains in dispute, and accounts vary widely.

Student recollections of the days and incidents leading up to the walkouts are vague--someone told them to leave when the tardy bell rang; their friend said it would happen at the start of lunch; they heard it started with a guy from another school who has a car; they saw people walking and they went along.

Spokespeople for the formal anti-187 campaign have denied responsibility for the student actions or, for that matter, the huge Oct. 16 protest march by 70,000 people through Downtown Los Angeles. Several of the students interviewed Monday attended the Downtown march and said it was there that they first heard people advocating school walkouts.

Others said they decided to act after watching television, both because of news reports of marches from other schools and because of a pro-187 advertisement that students refer to simply as “that commercial.”

The ad, which shows people scurrying across the California-Mexico border at night, caused Latinos at Leuzinger High School in Lawndale to angrily plan a walkout last week.

“It’s insulting,” said sophomore Jorge Higareda. “They show Mexicans, but they don’t show Asians coming over in boats or anybody else. It’s like we’re the only ones coming here. And then they call us illegal. Well, everybody here is illegal.”

The Leuzinger students did not even get out the door. Campus security guards rounded up the 20 organizers before they could rally others and took them straight to Principal Sonja Davis’ office. Davis called in the district superintendent and a district mediation specialist, and the three talked with the students for about two hours.

Although they cannot condone cutting classes, many school administrators and teachers also philosophically oppose the ballot measure, which, if enforced, would require them to report suspected illegal students and their parents to authorities.

A recent survey by the Tomas Rivera Center of superintendents of 50 districts with large Latino student populations found that 71% perceived no potential benefits in Proposition 187.

That lack of enthusiasm for the measure may account for the widely divergent school responses to the walkouts.

When about 200 teen-agers from Pasadena High School charged off campus last Thursday, carrying banners that said “No on 187” and waving Mexican flags, they were accompanied by the district superintendent, Vera Vignes.

After the students had walked five miles to Pasadena’s Civic Center, Vignes ordered three school buses to take them back to campus, where administrators held a “cool-down” session in the auditorium.

By contrast, the walkout in Pomona two weeks ago--by 100 students from Ganesha High School who were protesting a variety of issues including Proposition 187--resulted in about 70 suspensions for what an assistant superintendent called unsafe and dangerous behavior in defiance of authority, including scrambling up fences to get off campus.

Proposition 187 is one of the rare issues on which many of the teen-age opponents seem to be in sync with their parents. Parents have actually joined in some of the marches, while others have encouraged their children to participate.

“If this was something trivial, I would not want them to do it,” said the father of two East Whittier Middle School students, where a handful of students walked out last week. “But we told them if they really felt strongly, that we would be supportive if they walked out of school.”

The father asked not to be named for fear that school administrators would punish his children.

Times staff writers Denise Hamilton, Beth Shuster and Lisa Richardson contributed to this story.