Ethnic Tensions Flare Again at Grant High

In a disturbing repeat of last school year’s ethnic fighting, long-standing tensions between Armenian and Latino students flared again at Grant High School this week with nearly a dozen stare-downs and skirmishes among students, none of which resulted in serious injuries.

Although not as violent as the fighting in October 1994--in which two Armenian boys were stabbed and a 16-year-old Latino was later wounded in the calf in a drive-by shooting--the current confrontations at Grant are “serious,” one Los Angeles Unified School District police official said.

“Anytime we have activity at a senior high school where there is fighting, it’s serious. It’s not uncommon--we do have [school fights] all over the city, but it’s serious,” said Richard Page, the school district’s assistant police chief for the San Fernando Valley.

To keep the peace at the 2,800-student campus--where 58% of the students are Latino, and about 15% Armenian--a half-dozen police officers, some of them school police and others from the gang and juvenile units of the LAPD’s Van Nuys Division, patrolled the school’s perimeter on foot Friday. Their presence was especially evident during nutrition, lunch and dismissal times, when students congregate.

And on the school’s second consecutive peaceful day, Grant teachers, students and administrators again confronted the age-old beast of racial violence--where it comes from, how to prevent it and how to end it.

Those issues, Principal Eve Sherman said, are muddled.

“We’re trying to find out what the kids are feeling, getting to the root of what happened,” Sherman said. “We really want to find the cause of what happened.”

This much seems clear: Between May 17 and Wednesday, there were scattered skirmishes and stare-downs on campus, most quickly stopped by school administrators and the sole school police officer regularly stationed at Grant.

The most serious fighting occurred Tuesday, Page said, when school police records show that a group of about 15 Latino students fought five Armenian students during lunch.

Principal Sherman suspended a total of six Armenian and Latino students for three school days in connection with the melee; there were no arrests or expulsions. The suspended students will return to school Tuesday.

The cause of the fights is unknown.

Senior Annie Pogosian, 18, questioned while making weekend plans with friends, said the tension has been evident at least since her freshman year.

“They [Latinos and Armenians] just don’t like each other,” she said. “It’s racism.”

Freshman Lourdes Padilla, waiting for her school bus, said the tensions were bound to continue.

“Everyone just talks too much about other people,” she said.

The consensus among adults was that outsiders were at least partly to blame for the confrontations. LAPD Det. Craig Rhudy attributed the trouble to “tension between two gangs,” with members within and outside the school.

The police presence will continue at Grant “as long as necessary,” he added.

To defuse tensions and prevent more violence, the school also summoned the school district’s Youth Relations Office, office director Buren Simmons said. Since Tuesday, two or three assistants from the office have been at the school, talking to individuals or small groups of students, mediating among groups, training teachers to stem conflicts and engaging in rumor control. They will also stay on campus as long as the principal considers their presence necessary.

About 22 students are also learning to be peer counselors in the school’s year-old human relations class, Sherman said. The school is also relying on impact groups--confidential student discussion groups led by teachers and guidance counselors.

While most students said they felt safe--or certainly safer--with police and counselors at school, one student said he was more troubled.

“It’s just a matter of time before someone gets really beaten up off campus or before there’s a shooting or stabbing again,” said one Grant senior who would not give his name, fearing retaliation.

Without downplaying that concern, Sherman said, “This is a very safe campus. The kids are well protected. They’re safer here than they are on the streets.”