Parents Divided on Extent of Violence at Canyon Campus

Concerns over violence at Canyon High School have divided students’ parents into two camps--those who argue vociferously that the campus is awash in racial tension and violence, and opponents who say any such characterization is grossly exaggerated.

The latter group, several of whom volunteer their time to help the Canyon Country school, is planning to meet with the school’s administrators to halt what they say are isolated incidents of violence, including the stabbing Friday of a 16-year-old Anglo student. But they are also reacting to what they say are efforts to racially polarize the school, where the student body is 76% Anglo and 19% Latino.

“From a racial standpoint, I think it’s been blown out of proportion,” said Jan Wilde, whose son is a student at Canyon. “A lot of it has to do with the teen-age . . . hotheads, and the mouths, who can’t control themselves,” rather than groups of Latinos and Anglos in conflict, she said.

The other side contends that racial tensions are being minimized to protect local real estate values.

Adding fuel to the campus security debate were the arrests this week of six students on weapons charges and three students on drug-related charges. School administrators and Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials said the arrests were partly the result of adding a second deputy to patrol the campus after the stabbing.

On Tuesday, deputies at the campus seized a knife from one student and a loaded .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol. Three boys and a girl, ranging in age from 14 to 16, were arrested in connection with the handgun, which deputies said was being passed among them.

On Wednesday, one student was arrested for carrying baseball bats that deputies believed were to be used as weapons. Three others were arrested on drug-related offenses.

Principal Bill White said he spoke to those arrested on weapons charges. They said they were not arming themselves out of fear of racial conflicts at school, but they offered no other explanations, he said.

Previously, only two or three weapons had been taken from students within the past year, he said. He attributed this week’s arrests to the current atmosphere, saying students are now more likely to report seeing others with a weapon. “We’ve got kids coming in now and telling us things,” he said.

The school has been under attack by some parents since Friday’s incident, and some have called for White to resign. A meeting in the school gym Tuesday night drew more than 400 people, many of whom shouted accusations that the school is concealing racial tensions that have led to violence.

Others rallied to the administration’s support, White said.

“We’ve had more than our share of supportive parents call and say they are tired of the school getting beat up over this,” he said. “The kids said they are not afraid to walk around here, and the parents said the same thing.”

Jan Brown, a parent of two students who works daily at the campus as a volunteer receptionist, is helping set up a meeting between parents and administrators to discuss the issue.

Charges of racial tension have been overblown, Brown said. Some Anglo students were involved in altercations because they insulted Latinos until the Latinos responded, she said.

“If your son is . . . not making racist remarks, he’s not going to be jumped or assaulted,” she said.

But Dwight Van Auker, the parent of a student who was suspended from school for fighting, is organizing opposition to the administration. He charged that escalating gang problems and racial tensions have been “swept under the rug” to preserve real estate values in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Van Auker denied that his campaign was racially motivated. “The kids doing this happen to be Latino,” he said. “They could be any race. But they’re getting bolder and bolder and bolder.”

Parents cooperating with school officials “are either real estate agents or own very valuable houses and want to protect them,” he said. “They haven’t talked to these victims of gang violence like I have. They don’t know the reality.”

The reality, he said, is that a band of 30 Latino students “control what goes on at Canyon High School” through threats of violence and intimidation.

That description of the situation was rejected by school officials, other parents and Sheriff’s Sgt. Howard Fairchild, who heads the COBRA unit that investigates gangs in the area.

The Santa Clarita Valley “has far less gang problems than almost any other place I’ve ever worked,” he said.

Although a few Canyon High students are members of gangs based in the San Fernando Valley or other parts of Los Angeles County, they are isolated and not active or organized at the school, he said.

Students sometimes do form groups and give themselves a name, Fairchild said, but they are not gangs in the sense of controlling turf. Such groups usually disband quickly, often without committing crimes.

Parents and high school staff members say the Anglo students who were involved in the three stabbings at the school within the past year were reportedly all members of one such group--known either as the Smoking Tribe Brothers or Stoned Tribe Brothers.

Van Auker’s son was involved in one of those incidents, a fight last month in which he was jabbed with a mechanical pencil. Van Auker denied that his son was a member of the “tribe.”

The parents of Pat Butterfield, the 16-year-old student stabbed in the lung Friday, also said he was not a member. That stabbing was related to the earlier fight, in which Butterfield had come to the aid of Van Auker’s son.

Fairchild said interviews with nearly a dozen witnesses to Friday’s stabbing said it was not related to a gang battle or racial tensions. “I think it was just two kids settling a grudge,” he said. “There was an altercation at some time, and a guy wanted to get even.”

The 16-year-old youth arrested for allegedly stabbing Butterfield is to be arraigned today on a charge of attempted murder. A second youth, who is alleged to have helped in the attack, is to be arraigned on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon. A third youth is to be arraigned Friday on charges stemming from the attack.