District official downplays demonstration as peaceful

A minor demonstration in which a handful of students congregated near the front entrance of Maricopa High School during a lunch hour and passing period today was nothing to be concerned about, a district official said late Tuesday.

“To the best of my knowledge, we had 25, maybe 30 students,” said Tom Beckett, a spokesman for the Maricopa Union High School District. “As far as I understand, the students were peaceful (see “Maricopa Police arrest student on charges of disorderly conduct in school ‘walkout‘”).

Maricopa Police Officers were on hand to make sure things stayed that way, Beckett said, thanks to a tip administration had received a day earlier from a posting on a MySpace Web page.

The MySpace page, one of thousands on the networking Web site popular with teens worldwide, stated concerns about how administration had handled a recent incident in which MPD arrested a MHS student in connection with possession of a toy gun at school. It also called for all MHS students who agreed to walk out of class at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Beckett said.

Beckett said he could not discuss the status of the student involved in last week’s incident, but noted that the district took the MySpace posting calling for a walkout quite seriously. That’s why they called MPD and asked them to provide an on-campus presence.

“It was all preventative,” Beckett said. “They had some extra police officers there in the event that something did happen.”

Beckett noted that while it might have appeared to observers that more students had been involved, such simply wasn’t the case. He added that no one left class, and no one involved in the incident attempted to leave campus.

“There were some kids who were congregatating out there because it was a lunch hour,” he said, adding that there was also an end-of-the-year celebration taking place. “There was nothing disorderly, nothing outlandish. The kids simply went back to class.”

Photo by Michael K. Rich