Palo Alto Online : Number participating in 'egg war' dropped to 50

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Uploaded: Monday, November 2, 2009, 9:55 AM

Number participating in 'egg war' dropped to 50
Twelve were suspended, Paly Principal Jacquie McEvoy says in e-mail to staff

by Chris Kenrick
Palo Alto Online Staff

Only about 50 Palo Alto High School students -- far fewer than initial reports from students of 100 to 200 -- were involved in an egg fight last week that littered Gunn High School's sports facilities with yolks and shells, according to Paly Principal Jacquie McEvoy.

She said that 12 students were suspended for one or two days (fewer than earlier reports of up to five-day suspensions) and "a number of students" will be doing community service.

McEvoy, who earlier had declined comment on any suspensions, provided the new information in an e-mail sent to Paly staff Thursday evening. The e-mail was quoted in a report by the student-run Paly Voice.

Paly administrators had interviewed 20 to 25 students about the incident as of Thursday, McEvoy said.

"And, yes, we did involve both the PAPD (Palo Alto Police Department) and Stanford in trying to prevent this from happening," McEvoy said. "We found out about this bad practice last year when Stanford contacted us about the damage to its campus and we confirmed that there had been student injuries.

"We are committed to the physical and emotional safety of our students. So are the police. Unfortunately, our students chose to ignore our warnings as well as those from the police," McEvoy said in the e-mail.

On Friday, Paly student leaders accompanied McEvoy on an apology mission to Gunn, where they offered to pay for the damage, estimated by Gunn principal Noreen Likins as $1,500 to $2,000.

The delegation assured Gunn officials that cleanup costs would be covered by Paly, either by students themselves or from the student activities fund, Likins said.

Gunn has hired an outside firm to clean up the mess, but the job was not finished as of Friday afternoon. Egg damage at Gunn was significant in the parking lot, and extended to the football and baseball scoreboards, baseball field and the school's new track and newly opened swimming pool area, officials said.

The egg fight is an unofficial tradition of Paly's "Spirit Week" homecoming celebrations. In past years it took place in Stanford's arboretum eucalyptus grove. After encountering police at Stanford last Tuesday, Paly students decided to switch the venue to an area behind Gunn known as "Strawberry Hill," near Bol Park.

But the egg fight spilled over onto the larger campus.

"I'm really glad the Paly students came over," Likins said Friday. "They realized they had not thought through the ramifications of their actions.

"It was an impulse, 'Where should we go?' Had they kept it to an undeveloped area it wouldn't have been such a problem."

Gunn students and staff, reeling from a spate of student deaths at the CalTrain tracks -- the most recent one just last week -- were sad and disheartened to arrive at school and find their facilities defaced, parents said.

Likins said she did not like the idea of asking Paly students themselves to clean up the eggs.

"It takes expertise and, for the most part, it's been done," Likins said. "Eggs are a substance that really damage a lot of surfaces."

Comments

Posted by leslei, a member of the Gunn High School community, on Nov 2, 2009 at 10:50 am

maybe the kids shouldn't be involved in cleaning up gunn but they definitely should put in a good number of community service hours such as picking up garbage along the highway.

maybe then they will think twice about defacing property.