Hundreds of students at Lakewood High School staged a demonstration this afternoon on the campus quad in support of sexual assault victims after a social media account surfaced where anonymous individuals posted allegations of inappropriate behavior by their peers, a school official said.

According to Lakewood’s Sheriffs Department, deputies responded to the high school after reports that a fight had broken out on campus around the time students were protesting. No students were injured, school officials said.

Venice Gamble, the father of a freshman who participated in the demonstration, said students staged the walkout from their classes to protest what they said is the administration’s lack of effort to protect its students, especially from sexual and physical assault.

Chris Eftychiou, a spokesman for the Long Beach Unified School District, said the department had no “indications” of any current possible sexual assault cases at Lakewood High School.

In an earlier statement, Eftychiou said that the administration offered space for the students “to exercise their right to demonstrate.”

“The demonstration aimed to bring awareness to the issue,” Eftychiou said in an email.

Gamble said the students’ concerns started in 2018 when a 19-year-old man climbed a fence and sexually assaulted a student in a bathroom shortly after he attacked another woman on a Bellflower street. The man was later sentenced to more than 29 years in prison for the two attacks.

“The administration is negligent,” Gamble said. “They don’t follow through on safety. Students are driven to the point where they have to demonstrate.”

This story was updated to include additional comment from an LBUSD spokesman.