Calls mount to recall P.G. High student body president due to hate speech.

The scenario begins when a white teenage boy from Pacific Grove is on a trip visiting family in Kentucky, and he buys a Confederate flag at a dollar store. Is it a bad joke? A random, opportunistic moment? It might all seem more flippant (and forgivable) if in 2020 he hadn’t then posed for a selfie holding the Confederate flag and a replica of a gun.

That photograph, along with another selfie showing the teen holding a replica gun, were posted briefly before they were deleted, but not before fellow P.G. High School students captured screenshots. Beyond the photos, another student recorded brief video footage of the young man using the N-word in a classroom a year earlier, also posted then deleted soon after. But while lessons about grappling with racism seem to be painfully difficult to learn, a different lesson hit home for Anthony Biondi, now a senior and Associated Student Body president: The internet is forever.

The photos and video resurfaced, and prompted junior Alexandra Ulwelling on Aug. 7, just two days after the school year began, to launch a petition on change.org calling on school officials to remove Biondi from his role as student body president. (He also plays on the varsity football team.)

Staff writer Pam Marino broke the news about the petition and the hateful images on Aug. 11. Since then, the story has made its way through the PGHS community to students and parents, including to Kevin Hatton. Hatton is African American and the father of a biracial son who plays football for the P.G. Breakers. “He came home from football practice last week and said everyone was talking about this situation, and some of the players on the team were supportive of Anthony and saying, ‘what he did was no big deal,’ and ‘what’s so offensive about it.’”

This seems to be right on cue from the school administration, which has yet to take a strong stance. You may expect that Principal Lito Garcia would issue a powerful statement condemning racism. Instead, he described his milquetoast response to Marino this way: “When this was brought to my attention late last school year we responded appropriately. We worked with the student and family to address the matter.”

The student’s parents, Dan and Johanna Biondi, told Marino their son has invested in becoming a better person, and that investment included running for office on the ASB.

There’s another real-life civics lesson for young people: If you ask people to vote for you and you seek to represent them, you can just as easily lose their support. (Just ask Andrew Cuomo, who could explain his way out of his behavior only so many times.)

Garcia said it will be up to the students to pursue a recall election if they wish, rather than the administration taking action. In other words: the administration doesn’t want to take a stand and lead.

Now that the information is out in the open is the real test of community character. “If everybody looks the other way and says this is just a kid being a kid, that doesn’t make us feel any safer,” Hatton says. “We have lived here for 17 years. We’ve never had any direct racial problems, but it does make you wonder: How do people really feel?”

This is not the first time Pacific Grove has had an opportunity to reckon directly with racism. Sometimes it’s messy – look at the years of calls to recast the Feast of Lanterns, which plays upon Chinese stereotypes and obscures the real history of P.G.’s Chinese fishing village. It’s not cute to cling to racism.

As of press time, the change.org petition has received 604 signatures; Biondi is still ASB president. Ulwelling, along with dozens of community members, plan to speak when the P.G. Unified School District board of trustees meets at 6:30pm Thursday, Aug. 19. (The board meeting happens on Zoom – find the link at pgusd.org – or in person at the PGUSD administrative office.)

Hatton plans to be among them. He wants to ask the board: “Do you think it’s OK for a student who posed in front of a Confederate flag with a weapon to be student body president?

“This is not a good look for Pacific Grove High School, it’s not a good look for the community,” Hatton adds. “I don’t understand how you can allow a kid who is demonstrating this kind of behavior to represent the high school.”

I don’t understand it either.

SARA RUBIN is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@mcweekly.com. Staff writer Pam Marino contributed to this report.