Live Oak High School students want you to know that they like
one another.
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 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.”
The interruption started on Cinco de Mayo when Boden 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.
“It was about ensuring that our high school campus was orderly and safe,” Morgan Hill Unified School District Superintendent Wes Smith said.
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.”
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 began mass texting one other to leave school about 11 a.m. Their protest was orchestrated to demand respect, and six police cars escorted them from the school district to City Hall. News helicopters flew overhead and amplified the coverage – reaching Fox News, MSNBC, Headline News and numerous blogs.
Exhausted by attention
The four students’ choice was all set against the backdrop of Arizona’s strict immigration laws, which 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, but as in any high school a few do stir the pot, they said.
Safety is first 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, they 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. At lunch, hundreds gathered in the Live Oak quad to dispel rumors and ease tension that they said was caused by the national media.
Not quite done yet
The noise about Live Oak may not settle down quite as quickly as the students or administration would have liked. At 6 p.m. today, the Morgan Hill Unified School District monthly board meeting will move to Britton Middle School’s theater to accommodate a large and potentially hostile crowd.
In addition, about 100 local Tea Party activists held a mostly peaceful rally Saturday, where the overwhelming sound of car horns blaring took over downtown Morgan Hill. Attendees, many of whom had American flags on their clothing or painted onto their cheeks, carried signs with patriotic slogans, such as “God bless red, white and blue,” and waved flags amid the background of Americana anthems.
“We are not ashamed to wear this flag on any day,” said Kelly Stone, a local Tea Party organizer from San Martin. “And people blessed to live in this country should not be ashamed to display the American flag or to see the American flag.”
The only disturbance came when a man swatted a protester’s sign out of his hand. The man was arrested for misdemeanor battery.
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 stations and newspapers. In comments from bloggers, remarks on websites, letters to the editor and conversations 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, a parent of one of the boys said. Galli and his stepfather were interviewed by Fox News that day.
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. Still, 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 a Wednesday meeting between her, Rodriguez and Boden lasted 1.5 hours and that in her mind the argument against 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 years 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 Wednesday.
The debate about free speech and immigration won’t soon go away, but at Live Oak it has died down. No extra police were on campus and no television 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.”
