live oak high school morgan hill

Wrong Live Oak High receives threats

Five student-athletes exposed raw feelings about race and immigration in a Northern California high school this week when they made the provocative choice to wear shirts and shorts bearing the stars and stripes of the American flag to school on Cinco de Mayo.

Now their actions — which an assistant principal at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill labeled "incendiary" — are spilling across the small town's borders, igniting a polarizing national debate on cable television's 24-hour talkfest.

Wednesday, as the school's Latino pupils — nearly 40 percent of the Live Oak student body — were celebrating the Mexican army's victory against France in 1862, many wearing Mexico's colors of red, white and green, the five boys showed up dressed in the American flag.

Assistant Principal Miguel Rodriguez told the boys to reverse their colors, or go home. Three boys left campus because they found the other option to be "disrespectful" to the flag, and two remained in school anyway, without changing, their parents said.

Rodriguez could not be reached for comment — the school was referring all calls to the district office — but parents said he indicated to them he was concerned about the boys' safety.

The Morgan Hill Unified School District later said what happened was "extremely unfortunate" and that there is no ban on "patriotic" clothing. The new anti-immigration law in Arizona, giving police broad power to detain anyone suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, formed the backdrop for the school drama.

"We're happy about Arizona's law, and you bet we're fired up," said Julie Fagerstrom, whose son, Dominic Maciel, wore one of the offending shirts. Dominic's father, Fagerstrom said, is a first-generation Mexican-American.

But the boys' action also riled a number of the those who had celebrated Cinco de Mayo.

By Thursday morning, Mexican-American students began texting each other in class, and soon as many as 100 of them were standing in front of the school. Soon they were marching down the road to Morgan Hill City Hall. "When we were marching, they would pass in their trucks and were flipping us off," said Gerardo Cabralas, a junior, referring some non-Latino classmates. "And to be honest, sometimes we flipped them back."

A group of about a dozen Latino students expressed their dismay Thursday directly to the school's white students — particularly the boys who wore the flag clothing. "We respect them on Fourth of July," said sophomore Biana Coreas. "We don't go with our Mexican flags waving it up that day, so why can't they respect us too?"

The struggle for respect went on most of the day Thursday, and no one was certain when it would end.

"School was pretty crazy today," Dominic told the Mercury News. "I don't think I'm a villain, I was just representing my country. But I don't know if I would do this again. People took our message the wrong way. We weren't trying to start anything at all."

Some of the outrage was misdirected to Sutter County, where authorities said at least one person called Live Oak High School threatening violence.

Among several hate calls the school received was one promising to detonate a bomb or shoot at the school, according to sheriff's Lt. James Casner, who said the threat probably stemmed from news viewers confusing the Mid-Valley town with the Morgan Hill school.

"We will be actively investigating this," he said Thursday, adding the Sheriff's Department plans to step up its presence around Live Oak High. "Just because it's the wrong school doesn't mean someone won't try to do it."