By Bruce Barton

Concern over gang activity had administrators at Mountain View High School seeing red last week when they asked students not to wear that color. But it was the students who expressed anger over what they felt was a First Amendment issue.

Principal Pat Hyland said the commotion began two weeks ago when a “drive-by” took place. It involved suspected gang members threatening students from neighboring Alta Vista High School. Then a fight took place last week. Hyland said school officials and parents met with some students and were told the red clothing put them in potential danger because gangs use similar colors and clothing.

“Other students were saying, ‘How come you didn’t ask us?’” Hyland said. The administrators were accused of racial profiling. “The students were saying, ‘Wait a second, we can do what we want.’”

Hyland emphasized the issue was not racially motivated. “What gangs see (driving by the campus) is blocks of color,” she said. “Whether or not it is gang affiliated, the perception is there.”

Trying to limit red clothing, certain baseball caps and brands of pants while being sensitive to Mountain View’s open campus and students’ civil rights is proving “a tough line to lock,” Hyland said.

“When you go to school in Oz,” she said, referring to the low-crime, upper middle-class neighborhood surrounding the high school, “it’s hard for students to believe it (gang activity) could ever come here. What we’re trying to do is minimize what some see from the outside so they don’t gravitate toward it.”

Hyland said the issue involved less than 50 students. Mountain View currently has 1,656 students.

She said the situation with some students is still “fragile.” School officials’ quest for safety has left some students feeling “disenfranchised.”

“It’s not a gang issue so much as an identity issue,” she said.

Rich Fischer, superintendent of the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District, said the district has no formal dress codes, but officials “discourage the red color.”

“There is a safety issue,” he said. “I’ve heard too many stories of kids in harm’s way.”

Fischer noted there have been increased attempts to recruit gang members “up and down the state.”