Prop. 187 Controversies in Schools Heat Up : Van Nuys High: Student activists say they opposed Friday’s walkout and its lack of organization. They want to hold an informational meeting on campus.

While thousands of students walked out of schools last week to protest Proposition 187, Latino student activists at Van Nuys High School who had organized marches and a cable television campaign against the measure stayed on campus.

Members of the school’s MEChA chapter said Monday that they were disappointed in the behavior displayed by the Latino youth who protested Friday outside their campus and at the Van Nuys Government Center.

“I got pretty annoyed. It wasn’t organized. It wasn’t planned,” said Jose Alberto Cardenas, a Mechista who watched through his classroom windows as hundreds of Latino students challenged rows of police officers just outside his school.

“A lot of people didn’t realize how powerful this baiting by politicians . . . how much this has affected people,” observed Charles Wilken, a Van Nuys teacher and Green Party candidate for the 38th State Assembly District.

Hector Penagos, 18, said that as one group of students marched past Van Nuys High, they asked him to join their protest. “You are the vice president of MEChA. You should come out here,” Penagos said they demanded of him.

“I don’t think that’s right,” Penagos said he told them.

For the last several weeks, Van Nuys High School members of MEChA, a Chicano and Latino heritage organization for youth, had been busy organizing weekend marches and making anti-Proposition 187 commercials now being aired on cable television.

An open-forum discussion of both sides of Proposition 187, which would deny education and health services to illegal immigrants, was held at Van Nuys High last Wednesday as recommended by the Los Angeles Unified School district as a way to quell student unrest over the ballot measure.

“I really liked what we did on Wednesday. . . . People did listen,” Penagos said.

Rumors of more mass student walkouts are flying about campus, said MEChA president Dennise Perez. She and other Mechistas plan to ask the school principal if they can sponsor a schoolwide demonstration at the campus Wednesday, rather than have students boycott school.

“Instead of a walkout, we want to have a sit-out where we can have speakers come down here,” Perez said. “We need more education.”

The MEChA chapter at Polytechnic High School in Sun Valley also has criticized Friday’s protest.

“I was embarrassed by people,” said Polytechnic MEChA president Gustavo Gonzalez. “A lot of people were out there for the wrong reasons. They were saying, ‘Yeah. Let’s walk out of school.’ ”

Oscar Pelayo, a Polytechnic student and the coordinator of the Valleywide MEChA group, said that at his high school any MEChA member who walks out of school will be kicked out of the group.

“We are going to make sure that no one is going to walk out,” said Pelayo about the student walkouts expected to take place Wednesday and Thursday.

Pelayo will meet with MEChA leaders across the Valley tonight to discuss Friday’s student unrest and plan other more constructive forms of protest.