Saturday, August 6, 2005

Vandals hit LLHS with graffiti

Brandy Slagle News-Bulletin Staff Writer; bslagle@news-bulletin.com

Los Lunas Los Lunas High School football players were met with a provoking display of school pride Thursday morning when they reached their field houses.

Maroon-and-gold spray-painted writing spelled out "Belen High School Class of 2006" at several sites on the campus, but primarily the vandalism focused on the field house.

Los Lunas Superintendent Walter Gibson said the writing appears to be "an out-of-town visit," but is reluctant to accuse Belen students for the damage.

"We've turned it over to the police. They are doing the investigating now," he said.

Los Lunas Police Jose Hernandez, the school's resource officer, said the vandalism took place sometime between midnight and 6 a.m. Thursday. He said as of Friday, he has no leads as to who is responsible for the grafitti.

"We probably won't hear anything until school starts," Hernandez said. "I'm sure people will be bragging about it and we are asking people to keep an ear out."

Hernandez, who estimated that the cost to clean up the vandalism was about $300, said nothing was damaged at the school to the point where it couldn't be cleaned up.

Gibson said he's met with LLHS Principal Gina Sallie, as well as the football team and Belen Superintendent Kenneth Griego.

"We've talked about how this appears to be the first of the 2005-06 rivalry and how we'd like it to be the last," said Gibson.

LLHS football players were urged not to retaliate, he said. Instead, Gibson spoke with players on ways to build some bridges between the schools, in hopes that the rivalry will take a more positive and productive turn for students.

"We could get some coaches, and some members of student government from both schools together to meet and have them talk about ways we can get past this," he said. "When you have people coming onto a campus like that at night, there is always a chance that someone can get hurt, and we certainly don't want to see that happen. There are more productive things you can do with school rivalry."

Sallie said that she agrees with Gibson and is asking her students not to respond to the vandalism and generate more negative behavior.

"These students need to have a little more pride in their community," she said. "They need to think about what they're doing. They don't realize that, if they vandalize another school, that they could be bringing the same behavior onto their campus. Why would someone invite that to their school?"

Sallie said even though football team members were upset to see the new field houses had been vandalized, she thinks they will work to keep the rivalry from being destructive.

"Rivalry is good and fine for schools, but we need to channel it differently and keep it on the playing field. ... Rivalry is one thing, but when you start to destroy property, it's a different story"

Gibson said he intends to place a security assessment of all schools in the district on the school board meeting agenda in the near future.

"We will do a risk assessment of all of our facilities. The community is changing, and we want to take a look at our schools and see what we need to do to protect them," he said.

Sallie said she's still unsure how much the damage will cost the school, but is disheartened by the vandalism.

"We've been trying to get the school ready for school, and, with this, we've had to put off putting some of our classrooms together to clean this up," she said. "I hope that this does stop here."

Belen Superintendent Kenny Griego said that he has spoken with Gibson and they are both very concerned about the situation. He said this type of behavior is not good for either school district.

"It just upsets a whole lot of people," Griego said. "Everyone is getting ready for school, and this kind of thing is so disheartening."

Griego said if he finds out that a Belen student or students are responsible for the vandalism done at Los Lunas High School, he will do whatever the law will allow — including expulsion if necessary.

"This is not an idle threat, whether it's on our property or not, we will do whatever the law will allow. We will prosecute and discipline to the fullest," Griego said. "It's happened to us in the last couple of years and it kind of takes the air out of our balloon — especially when school is about to begin.

"This type of behavior will not be tolerated. Whether people want to admit it, we're sister schools — we're in the same valley and we're all accountable as a community."

Anyone with information about this case is asked to call Los Lunas Police at 865-9130.

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