Student Arrested After Melee Over Gay-Straight Club

A 17-year-old El Modena High School student was arrested on suspicion of assault and battery Friday, after a melee involving protesters clad as ninja warriors at the Orange school board meeting the night before.

The girl was released to the custody of her mother. According to police, the girl left a “bite wound” on a school principal but did not break the skin. School officials say the bite did break the skin, through the principal’s coat.

Orange detectives were investigating the incident Friday, reviewing tapes of the board meeting in which about 30 protesters, supporting the Gay-Straight Alliance club at El Modena and all dressed in the ninja outfits, lined the back wall of the board room.

Two of them rushed to the front of the room and wrested the microphone from a parent who opposes the club, which by a federal judge’s order can now meet at the school.

In the ensuing melee, administrator Fred Forbeck received a deep scratch and Canyon Hills Principal Stan Pasqual was bitten on the arm. Pasqual could not be reached for comment.

“They were there in the name of the club (and) this group was spoiling for a fight,” said Judy Frutig, spokeswoman for the Orange Unified School District. “Now, we have to think, Is it safe to allow . . . this group to organize as a club?”

Club founders Anthony Colin and Heather Zetin proposed the El Modena Gay-Straight Alliance in September but met opposition from school district officials. Saying they were concerned about the influence of outside groups and the possibility of teens teaching each other about sexuality, the school board unanimously rejected the club in December. Students filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the school district, and they won the right to meet at the school while their suit works its way through the courts.

Colin could not be reached for comment the day after the melee. Zetin and her mother, Judy Anderson, would not comment on the incident.

Lawyer David. C. Codell, who represents the students, said, “This protest was not [an alliance] activity. None of those protesters were representing the [club].”

Thursday’s incident was the second time the debate over the club has turned violent. Tension has been high in Orange since the club was proposed, drawing national attention to a conservative suburban city. On the day of the club’s first on-campus meeting, allowed by the judge’s order, club proponents and opponents got into a shoving match outside the school that briefly closed the street until police arrived.

The situation has also drawn a group of anti-gay protesters from Utah to the area. A Baptist minister from Kansas who gained notoriety by picketing the funeral of gay Wyoming hate-crime victim Matthew Shepard is planning to bring a group to protest at the school March 20. Frutig said the district already has increased the number of security guards at board meetings and said there will even be more guards at the next board meeting, March 20. “We’ll take special measures to protect members of the school board. We’ve already had in place a plan to evacuate the board members,” she said.

Orange Police Department spokesman Capt. Art Romo said, “We’ll be communicating with the school board to determine what issues are on their agenda, then we’re going to increase our presence in and around the school board.”

The pending arrival of the protesters from Kansas has school board President Linda Davis apprehensive. “We don’t want anything to do with this group from Kansas,” she said. “It disgusts us and we want nothing to do with it. . . . This is all very unfortunate, We really, really want to get the focus back on academics.”

Board member Martin Jacobson decried the violence at the meeting.

“I would call what they did intolerant,” he said. “The other side screams for tolerance but they can’t even listen to an opposing opinion. . . . It’s good to have a forum where people can have different opinions. To have something like this is just going to ruin it for everybody.”

Police Summoned

Frutig said officials called police when they first saw the line of protesters dressed in black and wearing masks; police, Frutig said, surveyed the scene but left the meeting because “there was nothing they could do about it.”

Romo said there were no immediate reasons for the police to remain at the scene. He said the protesters’ dress was “very strange and we were in fact doing spot checks on the situation. But it was our impression a the time that everything was peaceful.”

During the meeting, the protesters stood in the back, lining the walls at the rear of the board room. One held a sign reading “Anarchy Gay Pride”; some protesters raised their fists in a power symbol.

The violence started a little after 9 p.m., when parent activist Donna Sigalas, a vocal critic of the Gay-Straight Alliance, was standing at a lectern addressing trustees and the community. Frutig recalled the parent saying, “ ‘Would you want your children to associate with people like this?’ A parent said, ‘Yes!’ and then [two protesters] charged.”

The protesters grabbed the microphone from Sigalas. One school trustee announced that it was time to clear the room, and people started leaving. Outside, witnesses said, protesters threw trash cans at the building. Inside, protesters, parents and officials scuffled.

According to school administrators, Pasqual grabbed one of the two protesters, a male, whose compatriots tried to free him. All the protesters eventually broke loose and ran away, but not before Pasqual was bitten and operations supervisor Fred Forbeck was scratched on the left wrist.

Parent Bill Hayes was sitting near the action. He said parents and school administrators overreacted. “I saw adults acting like kids,” he said. “The kids were totally wrong, but there was no physical action by the kids.”

Another witness said administrators appeared to choke and hit protesters.

Parent Jan Freimanis, sitting next to Hayes, saw the scene differently. “I really didn’t think the adults reacted inappropriately,” she said. “I just saw it as the adults being protective in a situation that got out of hand.”

This is not the first time similarly garbed protesters have surfaced. On Feb. 23, not long after the Gay-Straight Alliance won the right to meet at El Modena, 13 of the protesters stood silently, fists held high, in the pouring rain outside the school.

At that time, club founders Colin and Zetin said they had never met the protesters before and did not know them; the protesters did not speak to anyone as school let out for the day.

Some carried signs reading, “In Full Support of the Gay Straight Alliance. We refuse to let our brothers and sisters be intimidated by fascists.” Another held a rainbow-colored gay pride flag.

Only one of the masked protesters, a man, would speak to a reporter. He would not identify himself but said he is an Orange County resident. “There is a lot of harassment with our brothers and sisters who are trying to organize this club,” he said. “We are individuals who are concerned about the safety of those children. We felt an obligation from the community to show support for these children and let them know they aren’t alone.”

He said the band of protesters hailed from various organizations across Southern California, and that they wore black as a color of solidarity. The masks, he added, were meant to be intimidating and to protect their identity from other groups that might react in a hateful manner.

Gay rights are “the next civil rights movement,” he added. “The very fact these children are willing to fight for their rights is a noble gesture.”

Staff writer Kate Folmar contributed to this report.