From Canyon To Cove: Being true to their school

“He who works with his hands is a laborer.

“He who works with his hands and his mind is a craftsman.

“He who with his hands, his mind and his heart is an Artist.”

This is the Laguna Beach High School motto, which appears on football programs and in the Alumni Assn. newsletter. It’s been part of the school’s tradition since the school was opened in 1934.

In that year, according to school historians, the school’s mascot, the Artists, was put in place, along with a brush-and-palette logo that still embellishes the school quad.

The Artists seems the perfect mascot for a school founded in an artists’ colony.

But Artists hasn’t been the official school mascot for the past seven years. In 2002, the Associated Study Body (ASB), the official student representatives of the school, voted to change the mascot name.

With the backing of the school principal and district officials, they placed a ballot before the entire school asking students to vote for any mascot name they wished — except The Artists.

Since then, the football, basketball, volleyball and baseball teams have worn uniforms proclaiming them “Breakers.”

But the Artists name has not been expelled from the school. Far from it.

The high school auditorium is called the Artists Theatre. The marching band is the “Marching Artists,” the high school newspaper is the Brush and Palette.

And then there’s the school motto, which is catchy and meaningful — and would be pretty hard to top.

But the Breakers are breaking in.

Next year, at the request of this year’s ASB, the high school will have a big mural of a breaking wave painted on one wall of the quad — opposite the brush and palette logo.

This year’s back-to-school events will be called Breaker Days, instead of the customary Confirmation Days.

Artists remain visible

Despite these inroads, the brush and palette, and the Artists, has proven to be difficult, perhaps impossible, to expunge.

In fact, a petition with 100 signatures of students asking that the Artists be returned to its place as the official mascot was presented to the Board of Education in June.

And a contingent of still-outraged Artists — alumni who graduated more than seven years ago — are determined to see that their school mascot not die out.

It’s a matter of pride for these alumni, who challenged the 2002 student vote as unwarranted and unorthodox, but got nowhere with administrators or school board members.

Not only is the rationale for the name change discounted by the alumni, but the process, they say, was deeply flawed.

Virginia Houts, a 1964 graduate, said she was “very upset” by the mascot change. She’s still upset seven years later.

“It’s stupid as far as I’m concerned,” Houts said. She points to the particular history of the school — founded during the Great Depression, when work was hard to come by.

“Huntington Beach had the Oilers, [other schools] were the Wildcats or the Tillers, all names that refer to oil drilling or farming. It was courageous to make your living off art in a worldwide depression.

“Now Laguna Beach is internationally known for its artists. It’s a wonderful mascot.”

Houts, a former president of the alumni association, says the name change is a source of anguish at alumni events and has caused a rift between the former and current student bodies and between the alumni and the district.

Vote challenged

The Alumni Assn. — along with dissenting parents and students — had vigorously challenged the 2002 vote, claiming that balloting irregularities should have negated it.

They asked the Laguna Beach League of Women Voters to examine the student election, and the group determined that students were coerced into voting out the Artists — and the community was lied to about the fairness of the process.

Still, the decision stood, despite repeated attempts to revisit the issue.

“We are now Artists and Breakers,” Alumni Assn. President Howard Hills told the school board in June.

Hills — whose daughter, Natalie, proposed a compromise in 2002 that would rename the sports teams but leave the Artists mascot intact — has led the charge against the name change for years.

But as the years ago by and more Breakers graduate from the school — including his own children — Hills is now loathe to wash out the Breakers.

“Any solution would be worse than the problem,” he told the board.

Now Hills says he would like only an apology.

Teasing on football field

Hills says he is still mystified not only by the way in which the school mascot was changed, but also by the apparent reason for the change — embarrassment.

Hills says the name change was apparently initiated by members of the football team and their friends, who dominated the ASB in 2002.

By all accounts, the name Artists has always engendered more than a little ribbing in sports — especially on the football field, where machismo is king.

Over the years, stories have accumulated of football players being “trash-talked” over the name emblazoned on their shirts.

To some, verbally defending the honor of the school name served as a great charge-up for a rousing game.

Houts says alumni she knows who were on the football team in years past “learned how to deal with it” — teasing over the name.

“It was just name-calling, in an attempt to get their goat,” she said.

But others — and possibly some parents — got tired of the constant teasing.

The fact that the football team hadn’t won a state title since 1946 didn’t do a lot to help players’ self-esteem.

Whatever the underlying motivation from students, there is abundant evidence of a lack of rational adult oversight as the ASB went about holding a sensitive and highly significant election that would have far-reaching repercussions for the entire school district and the community beyond.

New policy in works

Now the mess has landed in the lap of Supt. Robert Fraisse, who joined the district in 2006 and isn’t one to punt a thorny issue. Fraisse said he is planning to ask the board to craft a policy for a process by which the mascot name could be changed — opening the door for a possible change back to the Artists.

The process would include input from the entire school community — students, staff, teachers, alumni — and the outer community, he said.

There would have to be a “high threshold” for such a change — more than a slim majority, as was the case in the first name change.

And, we suspect, the policy would call for balloting procedures that would pass muster even with the League of Women Voters.

Fraisse hopes to meet with the alumni on the issue soon, and to have the policy in place by the end of the year.

In the meantime, he says, the Artists name will stay in place where it is, and the sports teams will remain the Breakers.

Houts says she is pleased by Fraisse’s approach.

“If all the stakeholders are involved and it’s a fair process, I would be heartened by that,” she said. “Ideally, I would like the name changed back to Artists.”

Still no championship

Back in 2002, maybe the kids, parents and school officials thought a more macho name would energize the sports teams and boost the school.

Maybe they thought wrong.

The football team still hasn’t won another state championship — although it won an Orange Coast League title in 2006. But, if the students and their backers were looking for a way to bullet-proof the school’s reputation, it backfired.

Ditching the “Artists” in favor of “Breakers” turned into a snickering national news story, as reported in the San Francisco Chronicle and Washington Post that year.

Way to go, team.

CINDY FRAZIER is city editor of the Coastline Pilot. She can be contacted at (949) 380-4321 or [email protected].