Live Oak High School students want you to know that they like
one another. They accept each other’s differences. When they talk
about their friends on campus
– they don’t delineate them as brown or white – they’re all
fighting acorns.
Live Oak High School students want you to know that they like one another.
They accept each other’s differences. When they talk about their friends on campus – they don’t delineate them as brown or white – they’re all fighting acorns.
A group of nine students – sans administrators – spoke candidly from Principal Nick Boden’s office Monday at lunch about what has gone on at Live Oak since Cinco de Mayo – a day they all wish to forget. The national media firestorm turned their high school into a frenzied mess in the next 24 hours – no one got any work done that day, they said.
“It really interfered with our education. I couldn’t hear myself thinking because of the news helicopters,” Teddy Ornduff said. “This has been the most unnecessary waste of time by, like reporters in New York. I’m sure they have something better to do.”
The interruption started on Cinco de Mayo when Principal Nick Boden made the final decision and gave four students a choice – to turn their red, white and blue T-shirts inside-out or receive an unexcused absence and go home. Boden gave the boys an ultimatum to quell any potential violence, according to the school district. Superintendent Wes Smith said, “It was about ensuring that our high school campus was orderly and safe.” After a meeting with their parents that morning, the boys went home.
“We have 18 days of school left,” Brandon Riggins said Monday. “It’s interrupted our education,” he said looking frustrated. “This is a great school.”
If the 10 or so news vans outside their campus wasn’t enough for Live Oak early Thursday morning, a few hours later Hispanic students would begin mass texting one other to leave school about 11 a.m. Their “rebellion” was orchestrated to demand respect as six police cars escorted them from the school district to city hall and news helicopters flew overhead and amplified the coverage – reaching Fox News, MSNBC, Headline News and lighting up the blogs.
Students tire of spotlight
The four students’ choice was all set against the backdrop of Arizona’s strict immigration laws that make it a crime to not have proper U.S. identification before crossing the Mexico-U.S. border.
The nine students said they and their fellow students were exhausted by the negative media attention.
Both sides were wrong, Francisco Lupercio said Monday.
“This solved nothing,” he said about the Hispanic students marching.
“They did it just to get out of class,” added Andrew Pitzer.
Francine Roa, a 2005 Live Oak graduate, waved a large Mexican flag at the march Thursday with her 2-year-old son Elias Martinez in tow.
“We did this to support the Latino/Hispanic community,” she said.
The Live Oak students don’t want to be labeled as racist or to be a catalyst for dividing America. As they see it, Assistant Principal Miguel Rodriguez and Boden made the right decision to ensure the safety of everyone.
They said that there was enough tension on campus from a few students, enough yelling by both sides, to ask the boys to talk about it in the front office. The students maintain that the majority of students get along.
Safety is the No. 1 priority, Boden and Smith have said and what happened that day – as inflammatory as it might be construed – was proactive and done only to maintain a safe school climate. The decision was never about banning red, white and blue at a public high school, he said.
Boden apologized to the Live Oak community and said that in the situation he “may have moved too quickly in drawing the line of when to take preventative action.”
More than 10 police officers patrolled Live Oak after school Thursday and Friday – upsetting freshman Jesse Benefiel.
“All of those policeman? Maybe just one extra … it was like we’re a prison,” he said.
On Friday, as Smith held a news conference at the district headquarters, many LOHS students wore white and purple to show their solidarity with one another and as a outward expression of peace and unity. At lunch, hundreds gathered in the quad area at Live Oak to dispel the rumors and ease the tension, they say, was caused by the national media that used a decision by their administrators to fracture the community.
Public expected en masse
The noise about Live Oak may not settle down as quickly as the students or administration would like. At 6 p.m. today the Morgan Hill Unified School District monthly board meeting will move to Britton Middle School’s theater as a precaution to hold a crowd that is expected to be contentious.
At lunch Monday, the students who emptied out their thoughts on the T-shirt controversy all agreed that the four students had a single motivation in mind: Attention.
“Now they’re seen as heroes to people,” Chelsey DellaMaggiore said.
The four involved – Matt Dariano, Daniel Galli, Dominic Maciel and Austin Carvalho – were interviewed by Bay Area television stations, radio, newspapers and quoted online.
In comments from bloggers on websites, letters to the editor and in conversation around town, the teens have been praised and vilified.
None of the four boys attended school Friday because they feared violence and had received text messages from fellow students that they were going to be stabbed, according to one parent. Galli and his stepfather were interviewed by Fox News that day.
Even from the first media contact with the Morgan Hill Times Wednesday, when the boys returned to Live Oak for a photograph after their parents took them out of school, a few of the boys walked the campus awarding high-fives to anyone who would ask, “what’s going on?”
That day and still now, Dariano maintains that the group wore the shirts purely to be patriotic.
“How many times do we have to be asked this?” he said by cell phone Monday. “We weren’t trying to start anything.”
Diana Dariano spoke by phone Monday afternoon. She said the boys – who were next to her as she spoke – said they in no way regret wearing red, white and blue May 5 – but they too, just want to return to normal.
“They’re very proud to be acorns,” Diana said. “They never intended this to go national or anything like this.”
Dominic’s mother Julie Fagerstrom said Wednesday that she “stands behind their patriotic nature and them expressing their individuality.”
Dariano said the Wednesday meeting between Rodriguez and Boden lasted an hour and a half and that in her mind the argument of wearing red, white and blue became a contradiction when she learned the school was celebrating Cinco de Mayo with Mexican dancers at lunchtime – a first for Live Oak. In year’s past the school had an international food day.
“(Administrators) said we could wear it on any other day, but today is sensitive to Mexican-Americans because it’s supposed to be their holiday so we were not allowed to wear it,” Galli said that day.
The debate about free speech and immigration won’t soon go away, but at Live Oak is has died down. No extra police were on campus and no TV news cameras bombarded the front lawn.
“If this wasn’t all over the country, it would have been fine. We would have dealt with it here,” Riggins said.
“I’m exhausted by it all,” said student Victoria Wright. “We just want it to blow over.”
What: MHUSD school board meeting
When: 6 p.m. Tuesday
Where: Britton Middle School theater, 80 W. Central Ave.
