4 Students to Be Moved Over Crude Newspaper

Officials confirmed Thursday their intention to transfer four Pacific Palisades high school students to other schools because of their involvement with an underground newspaper.

The transfers follow the suspension of 11 students who wrote, printed or distributed the paper, which officials have called vulgar and threatening to school staff members. The transfers can be appealed, and at least one of the four students said Thursday that he would fight his transfer to Venice High School.

Greg Strausberg, 17, a senior, said school officials were being vindictive, and were jeopardizing his acceptance to college. Strausberg, who admitted passing out scores of copies of the paper, said officials were sending him to another school because he did not name other students involved.

“I think I should be disciplined, but they’ve turned this into McCarthyism,” Strausberg said. “They even grilled my mother for names.”

Shel Erlich, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Unified School District, said officials were prohibited from discussing disciplinary cases and would not comment on Strausberg’s claims.

Among other claims, Strausberg said that a school official and an LAUSD Police Department detective had used threats of criminal prosecution to get additional names. Erlich confirmed that district police were involved in an investigation of the paper--which ridiculed a campus officer--but said no criminal charges have been filed in the matter.