El Modena Yearns for a Return to Normal

The whole gay-support club issue at El Modena High School wasn’t of much concern to Ruth Cordero--not until a melee with demonstrators erupted outside the Orange school last week and her two teenagers came home arguing opposite sides of the issue.

“My daughter, who is 18, says that those students need a place they can be comfortable and develop--that they’re good people,” Cordero said. “But my 16-year-old son? Well, he’s a boy. It offends his masculinity.”

Now that polarized camps are living in her home and activists have confronted each other on city sidewalks, “It’s a huge worry,” Cordero said. “In the middle of the school year to have the police arriving at campus and demonstrators yelling at each other. . . . I’m afraid this is going to just go on and on and on until something serious happens and someone does something crazy.”

Whatever stance they take on the Gay-Straight Alliance club--for, against or in the middle--students, parents and teachers at El Modena all yearn for a return to a time before the school became linked with gay rights.

“My daughter goes out soliciting singing valentines for the vocal music department, and now the question comes up when she says she goes to El Modena,” said Donna Sigalas, a parent organizing opposition to the club. “You introduce yourself and suddenly you have to tell people whether you’re gay or straight or bisexual.”

When the controversy comes up in conversation at El Modena, says sophomore Gerald Mascardo, most students he knows feel passionately--not for or against the club, just that they profoundly do not care.

“No one really cares any more,” Mascardo said. “The only people who really care about it are those who A) want to start the club, and B) those who are protesting it. And where are they coming from? Utah? Come on, there must be things for them to worry about in their own state.”

At the controversy’s start he admits to caring that high school rivals might label El Modena as a “gay school.” Now even that worry is boring.

The school landed in the spotlight in early December when the school board refused to allow the club to meet. Two club founders proceeded to sue the board under a federal equal-access law that prohibits discrimination against extracurricular clubs on the basis of political, philosophical, religious or other content of speech at meetings.

Since then, El Modena has been featured on all of the major TV networks, USA Today, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Christian Science Monitor.

Sophomore Stephanie Shanfield, 16, supports the club’s right to meet but believes media hype has damaged the school environment. “Lately, it’s not about going to school for education, it’s about going to school to get on TV,” she said.

“Ninety-five percent of the kids and parents here are so neutral on this,” said parent Carol Goodman, whose son attends the school. “They don’t care, they aren’t really for or against it.”

Student body demographics--56% white, 31% Latino, 10% Asian and a sprinkling of other ethnicities--show that the school already is place that practices tolerance, Goodman said.

“I could have put my children in private school, but I wanted them exposed to the real world,” she said. “These kids get along so well--I wish the adults could get along that well.”

After a judge took the district to task and granted the club the right to meet, many had hoped that the issue might be resolved by the board of education at its meeting last Thursday.

More than 200 people turned out to see whether the district would drop its opposition to the club or, as a way to prevent the club from meeting, ban all extracurricular clubs.

Instead, the school board moved toward requiring parental permission for high school students who want to join extracurricular clubs. It also banned all extracurricular clubs at middle and elementary schools.

The Gay-Straight Alliance can meet, but opposition as well as a possible legal challenge remain.

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At that board meeting and in interviews, those involved often expressed a tired anger.

“I am outraged when I go home every day and see media trucks everywhere,” El Modena neighbor Rich Herber told the board. “I am outraged to see protesters with their ugly, vicious, hate-filled signs.

“I have one question: Who’s to blame for this mess? You people up there are.”

However, board members say they are equally anxious for a return to normality.

President Terri Sargeant, whose two sons who attend El Modena, said that she has talked to her sons, their friends and many parents: “What they want most is for their campus to be back in a normal fashion and for their school to be recognized for the [great] campus that it is. . . . It’s a very, very disruptive atmosphere for our kids.”

But Annbeth Shanfield, Stephanie’s mother, said the board’s efforts to keep gay issues from being discussed at school had backfired.

“I think if they would just leave the kids alone, the furor would die out,” she said. “These kids need to go about their business, which is learning.”