San Gabriel Valley : CARTOON CONTROVERSY

A group of predominantly African American parents who were outraged last month by a student newspaper cartoon satirizing former Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman has formed an advisory committee to help ease lingering tensions and bring change to Diamond Bar High School.

The 16-member committee is developing a list of priorities to be presented to officials from the school and the Walnut Valley Unified School District next month, said Gwen Copeland, president of the area’s Council of African American Parents. The parent group has asked for more African American faculty and staff and more sensitivity to the black community.

Some students and parents decried as insensitive a truncated racial epithet included in the cartoon, which appeared in the school newspaper above an editorial condemning racism in the Los Angeles Police Department. Administrators and the newspaper staff promptly issued apologies and the paper’s faculty adviser stepped down.

But hard feelings between the parents group, student journalists and some faculty members have remained, Copeland said. To ease tension and further explain her group’s position, Copeland said, the new advisory committee is planning to meet with teachers next week.

‘There’s quite a bit of tension . . . but one positive is that it did open up a dialogue,” said Robert Waters, one the parents who complained when the cartoon was published.