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Five days after this week’s Berkeley High-Oakland Technical High football game was abruptly canceled by Principal Jim Slemp, Berkeley school officials were still trying to reschedule the game for an alternate site—but apparently not in coordination with their counterparts at Oakland Tech. 

And given the publicity surrounding the cancellation, the Oakland Tech Athletic Director expressed doubts that the game should be played at all. 

The game between Berkeley and Tech, originally scheduled for this Friday at the Berkeley High campus, was canceled by Slemp last Wednesday after receiving word from the Berkeley Police Department about threatened violence from spectators planning to attend. 

Berkeley Police Department spokesman Kevin Scofield said Monday afternoon that it is “still unclear as to the exact nature of” the threatened violence. 

“It is my understanding,” he added, “that [the problem] was not between people on the two teams, but between other people who would come and create a problem.” 

Scofield said he had no information as to whether the “other people” involved students from the two schools or non-students. 

While acknowledging the potential danger of the threatened violence, Oakland Tech Athletic Director Karen Jones wondered why she and other Tech officials were not included in the decision to cancel the game. 

Jones said that she did not learn about the cancellation until Thursday of last week, the same day the San Francisco Chronicle made the announcement in a front-page story. 

Slemp declined to comment on the affair, and his secretary referred reporters to Berkeley Unified School District spokesperson Mark Coplan, who said Monday that the district was actively seeking out another site to hold the game 

Jones said she wasn’t being consulted on that matter, either. 

“Before it got to that point of cancellation, maybe what we should have done first was to talk about the alternatives among police personnel and officials of both schools,” Jones said, wondering why there was such a rush to unilaterally cancel the game a week and a half before it was scheduled to be held. 

“I’m wondering if we should even move forward with this now, because too much has been stirred up. Now if you try to correct it and start publicizing where the game is going to be, then that could be a problem. And if those people weren’t thinking about doing something before, now they are.” 

If the game is still to be played, Jones suggested two alternative sites: Skyline High School in Oakland, and Oakland Tech itself. 

“Oakland Tech would be ideal,” she said, adding that if the game were held there this year, she would recommend that it include no spectators “because of this community war that’s going on. Because we are not able to identify those community people, then the best thing to do would be to just have the players at the game.” 

Jones said Tech’s field “has four gates which could be easily locked, and you can’t see the game from the street. I look at that as being more of a safe haven, and more of a controlled environment [than Berkeley High]. This was a two-game contract, and Oakland Tech was scheduled to host the game for next year. We could have flip-flopped and gone to Berkeley next year instead. Hopefully, by then, all of this would have died out.” 

But BUSD spokesperson Coplan, who said an alternate field must be found by noon Tuesday if the game was still to be played on Friday, nixed Tech as a site. 

Coplan said he wanted to locate a field that the potential troublemakers wouldn’t “go looking for.” Although Coplan remained hopeful that an alternate field could be found, he said that several campuses had already turned him down “because there’s been so much press about this.” 

Marty Price, vice principal at Oakland Tech, said he doesn’t think the game should have been canceled. Although he called the information about the potential violence “credible” and stressed that police may have more information than they are revealing, Price said that given the information currently available, he thought the game could have been played at Berkeley High with parents and students with school identification in attendance. 

“We hold dances at [Oakland Tech] under those circumstances. Students have to get ID bracelets from the office in advance of the dance, and they can’t get in without one,” Price said. 

“Berkeley could have beefed up its police force for the game. They could have treated it like security personnel normally treat a Raiders game or a 49ers game,” he said. “We could have worked it out.” 

Price also revealed a possible source for the initial information about the threatened violence. He said it may have initially come to officials’ attention from an Oakland Tech football player, who warned his mother not to come to the game. 

The mother then contacted a Berkeley Police official who volunteers at after school Oakland Tech athletic activities. 

Price blamed the cancellation on the jumpiness of Berkeley school officials. “This may have been a problem with a first-year principal who doesn’t know the culture here yet,” he said. “He should have waited and looked at the alternatives first.” 

Meanwhile, people associated with Berkeley High were divided over the cancellation. 

“I would have been scared to death to have gone while things are this hot,” said Laura Menard, parent of a Berkeley High student and chairperson of the Russell, Oregon, California Street Neighborhood Association, the South Berkeley neighborhood where much of this summer’s violence has been centered. “I would prefer to err on the side of caution.” 

But students thought the game should go on. 

“I think it’s a bunch of crap,” said Julian Jones, a Berkeley High football player. “If it’s a safety issue, maybe we should have more cops and more security.” 

Lita Jackson, a Berkeley High cheerleader, said she didn’t believe any violence was imminent. “It’s not going to be big thing,” she said. “We all grew up with Tech people.” 

Tech AD Jones called the whole situation “one of those unfortunate things,” and said if the game isn’t played, it would be “a big disappointment” to Oakland Tech players. “A lot of them played Pop Warner football together and it’s been a number of years since Oakland Tech played Berkeley. So they were looking forward to it. They were excited.”