Pierce College Anti-War Rally Becomes Battle of Words, Fists : Protest: Marchers are stopped by demonstrators supporting U.S. policy in the gulf. To school’s dean, it was like scenes of 20 years ago.

A brief fistfight broke out Thursday between Pierce College students protesting American military action in the Persian Gulf and a small number of football players who called for support of U.S. troops.

“I haven’t seen anything like this for 20 years,” said Phil Stein, the school’s dean, referring to student demonstrations in the 1960s against the Vietnam War.

Counter-demonstrator Joe Quintos, 21, said he opposed the peace rally because students should “back the government. The soldiers over there need our support, not people bad-mouthing them.”

Three students were arrested and campus police said an unidentified man was treated at a local hospital for minor injuries received during the scuffle.

Quintos of Northridge, Leon Glasgow, 18, of Van Nuys and Donovan Curtis, 20, of Granada Hills were arrested on battery charges and released, police said. They described themselves as Pierce students.

Among the peace demonstrators was Ron Kovic, a wheelchair-bound Vietnam veteran whose conversion from gung-ho Marine to peace activist was the subject of the film “Born on the Fourth of July.”

More than 300 students abandoned classes and began marching peacefully through the normally quiet Woodland Hills campus about noon, carrying signs and banners. Minutes later, several students who had identified themselves as members of the Pierce football team stood in the path of the marchers, carrying an American flag and chanting, “U.S.A., U.S.A.”

The fight broke out and participants on both sides were knocked down in the scuffle, involving a small knot of demonstrators and counter-demonstrators at the head of each group. The fight lasted no more than a minute.

Chuck Nixon, a speaker representing Veterans for Peace, said he was beaten to the ground with fists when the two groups clashed.

“None of us came here to fight,” said Nixon. “We came here for peace.”

Campus police arrived several minutes later and the march continued without incident. Several Los Angeles police officers watched the rally from a short distance.

Pierce student body Vice President Alex Haydon said the rally was intended to show “students are against what is going on in the Middle East. If we go to war, sure, the U.S. will win, but people will die.”

At a rally after the march, students cheered Kovic when he called for delays in a U.S. military assault on Iraqi armed forces now occupying Kuwait. Kovic was not present when the fight broke out.

Kovic warned students that “we are being led down the path to a war that has no end.” He called for students to continue peaceful demonstrations until “hundreds of thousands are in the streets.”

Other speakers called for the United States to allow additional time for economic sanctions against Iraq to work before fighting. Gregory Cook of the California League of Conservation Voters said a war would not only cost untold thousands of lives but is also likely to create an environmental disaster, with the smoke from oil well fires burning millions of gallons a day for months.

Protest organizer Scott Linder, 20, called for fellow students to “wake up every other college” to the threat of war. A second rally is planned for today at Valley College in Van Nuys.

Pierce students and faculty said they were surprised by the number of students who participated in the rally.

“This is a very quiet, laid-back campus,” said Pierce College President Daniel Means, who watched the rally.