Peer Pressure

According to Grant High School’s clique etiquette, Andy, Hala, Edgar and Erik should not be socializing.

Andy Jassick, a white 16-year-old with shaggy hair and an oversized “South Park” T-shirt, hangs with a crowd known as the wrestlers.

Hala Shamas, 16, of Syrian descent, wears a blue DKNY shirt and stylish butterfly clips in her hair and belongs to “the Versace crowd.”

Edgar Keroglyan, 16, has a tattoo on his finger and “kicks it” with his fellow Armenian friends on the north end of campus.

Erik Gonzalez, an 18-year-old Latino, wears silver rings on eight fingers, studs in his nose, ears and chin and shaves his head.

Not only do they talk, laugh and joke with each other, but today they will sign a peace treaty with teachers, classmates, administrators and politicians, signifying an easing of tensions at the 3,400-student campus.

With more than 25 ethnic cultures represented among the students, it is one of Los Angeles Unified School District’s most diverse high schools.

Last October, a long-standing feud between Latino and Armenian students erupted into a lunchtime brawl, with more than 200 teenagers shoving one another, screaming and throwing soda bottles and trash cans.

Fifteen helmeted police officers arrested five students, detained another 40 and ordered everyone else to return to class. At least 10 students, some teachers and a maintenance worker were slightly injured.

“What it comes down to is a tradition” of fighting between the largest ethnic groups on the campus, said Joe Walker, Grant’s principal since September and an assistant principal since 1984.

Through the years, fights have escalated into stabbings, shootings and the Oct. 21 melee.

Students signing the peace treaty will agree to respect and promote an understanding of different cultures and to end violence. By all accounts, it will not end ethnic conflicts.

“We don’t want to be too grand or too sweeping,” said Joe Hicks, executive director of the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission, one of several agencies that have worked with Grant’s students and faculty since the melee.

“There’s no silver bullet for transforming the school into a totally peaceful and harmonious place,” he continued. “But this is a positive step.”

After the fight, the number of campus security aides was increased from eight to 28, more random metal detector checks were conducted and the no-tardiness policy was more strictly enforced.

In the long term, Hicks, Walker and others want to work with neighboring campuses, particularly middle schools, to develop a program in which older students curtail ethnic misunderstandings among younger students.

Hicks and mediation experts from the county, the school district and the U.S. Department of Justice are training teachers and students to prevent and defuse conflicts. They also are meeting with parents and community members because friction between Latino and Armenian adults is a citywide problem, particularly in the east San Fernando Valley, Hicks said.

“It’s like the Hatfields and the McCoys,” he said. “Many people have forgotten what the hard feelings are over.”

At Grant, Walker and other high-level LAUSD administrators attribute the tension, in part, to long-forgotten disputes over earthquake relief drives in the 1980s after quakes struck Mexico and Armenia. Students from each ethnic group claimed the other received more sympathy and relief from the school and community, leading to classroom arguments.

During lunch and nutrition breaks, Andy, Hala, Edgar, Erik and other students from the first-period peer-mediation class patrol the campus, ready to stave off fights with calming words.

“When I tell [other teens] to stop fighting, they’ll listen more than if I was a grown-up, because they trust me more,” Edgar said.

The four hope to set an example by mingling with all the ethnic and social groups, including Latinos, Asians, surfers, skaters and jocks. But, they acknowledged, students sometimes look at them “weird” and even mock them.

“I’ll go over to the Armenian area to say, ‘What’s up?’ and some people are cool,” Erik said. “But a lot of people think I’m going over there to start a fight because I’m Mexican. They’re surprised when I don’t.”