8th Grader sent home for patriotic shirt with gun image on it
BONUS QUESTION: When does Alan get invited to the White House?
Via KOIN 6 News (h/t American Power):
A local principal sent an 8th grade student home this week for wearing a shirt supporting U.S. troops.
The problem, according to Gresham-Barlow School District [Oregon] officials, was that it had a gun on it.
Now, many are speaking out against the principal’s decision to reprimand the student for something they consider a display of patriotism.
“It means a lot to me because our family, we have a lot of people who were in the military,” middle schooler Alan Holmes said. “I didn’t see anything wrong with that shirt… It’s sad to see because it’s a fallen soldiers’ memorial.”
But administrators at Dexter McCarthy Middle School didn’t see it that way.
After getting sent to the principal’s office at recess, Holmes was scolded for failing to meet the school’s dress code. The principal then told him to change his clothes or leave.
“He chose to come home and I’m proud of that,” Alan’s mother Connie said.
The school district provided the following statement in response to the incident:
I cannot comment on a specific situation due to student confidentiality requirements. We have a policy on student dress and grooming. Weapons on a shirt are not appropriate in a school setting.
BONUS QUESTION: When does Alan get invited to the White House?
Update: This may partially explain it:
@LegInsurrection This is the same School District that is spending $100K a year on White Privilege Conference http://t.co/2nJUfI4KqE
— Chance (@TheSlimChance) October 9, 2015
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Obama just tweeted: “Cool shirt, Alan. Want to wear it to the White House?”
Haha, just kidding.
I’d love to see every single kid at that school show up Monday wearing that shirt.
Well, I could swear I see some type of device on that shirt with wires sticking out of it.
Nothing’s going to change, until people stop sending their kids to the government built “schools”. Stop asking these government sponsored baby sitters to watch your kids. Private and Homeschooling is the only answer. Well, aside from uniforms or just teaching the kids to dress like adults.
This is so easy: get the federal government out of the school business, give parents vouchers, and let every school compete on equal footing. If public schools with administrators like this are what parents want, they will succeed and prosper.
If not, he can hit the bricks and look for real work.
Let the free market decide. It’s the only fair way.
“He chose to come home and I’m proud of that,” Alan’s mother Connie said.
Freakin’ A RIGHT…!!!
You GO, Alan…!!!
We need to take back the Presidency … and Boards of Education as well. This administrator should be handed his walking papers.
And what Estragon said.
So many fronts, so little time
“He chose to come home and I’m proud of that,” Alan’s mother Connie said.
I’ve got your back, too, Alan. You did right!
Weapons on a shirt are not appropriate in a school setting.
Having idiots in charge is not appropriate in a school setting.
If his mother really wants to be a responsible parent she can simply send him to school wearing an equally patriotic shirt, without any guns.
This, in fact, would be easy to accomplish, as the great majority of American patriotic art doesn’t show weapons.
One way to verify that for children’s artwork is by checking out the yearly VFW children’s art contest (check it for sure if your kids or grandkids are taking art classes in school, and let their teachers know about it – cash prizes up to $10,000 ). Over the past five years only a few of the top winning artwork contained weapons. That’s because guns have diddly-shit to do with patriotism.
http://www.ladiesauxvfw.org/?s=2013+patriotic+art+winners
“Dufus” best describes you.
Ah more bile coming from your… Whatever.
jenn, you spelled “douch-fest” wrong.
Yeah, it’s spelled: d.o.u.c.h.e.p.i.e.r.r.e
If his mother really wants to be a responsible parent she can simply send him to school wearing an equally patriotic shirt, without any guns.
Um, why? What’s wrong with the patriotic message he chose to convey, and why should his mother make him replace it with a different one?
Why does the school object to this message in particular? What harm does it fear may come from it? Is it afraid the gun on his shirt will go off and hurt someone?! Or that he will go crazy and start shooting it?! Perhaps that the gun on his shirt will speak to the darkness in his soul and turn him into a monster?!
The school’s purpose in enacting this rule is to indoctrinate students with an instinctive hostility to guns; and that purpose is fundamentally un-American and must be opposed by all legal means.
No, it’s to keep disruptive images out of school as much as possible. And to be consistent doing that.
Here’s a relevant portion of the dress code at a middle school in San Pedro,CA. It’s typical of dress codes all across the US:
“No tops (to include sweatshirts/outerwear) with logos or trademarks of alcoholic beverages, suggestive messages or illustrations (sexual, racial, drugs, tobacco, weapons, or violent nature), or vulgar language.”
If students are allowed to ignore the dress code weapons restriction for patriotic artwork, they also can ignore it for historical depictions, like scenes showing American Indians shot by settlers, and Mexicans mowed down with gunfire after the Alamo, and Americans in battle gear shooting Japanese soldiers after Pearl Harbor. You think that kind of graphic Patriotic American history should be celebrated in middle school? Would you complain if kids wearing artwork like that with guns, no matter how benignly displayed were told to ditch them?
I don’t want middle school kids distracted in school. And where did you get the asinine idea schools have a responsibility to foster ANY impression about guns, positive or negative.? Are you ideoidically suggesting a Gun Appreciation syllabus be incorporated in middle schools in the US?
And keep this in mind, Milhouse – public school dress codes are an outgrowth of conservative kvetching. For decades Conservatives were chastising ‘permissive Liberal educators’ for allowing students to wear sloppy or sexual permissive clothes to school, and touting the dress codes at Catholic and other religious schools as exemplars to follow.
So now your bitching at them for taking that advice? And as far as I can tell, Catholic schools still demand students wear approved uniforms. Would any of you kneejerkers be complaining iif a religious school made the kid ditch the shirt? It wouldnt even have been covered here
And in this modern age, guns are about as important to liberty as matches are to cooking dinner.
The enemy of Liberty is information control!
The shirt is less disruptive than a clock deliberately designed to look like a bomb. So take your hypocrisy and double standards and shove ’em.
You want to take away his freedom, and then strut around like you’ve done something practical and wonderful.
Perfectly put.
See, this is why I resist getting a blog. Because I wouldn’t be able to resist tracking back this tool and posting his meatspace address for all to see. Probably on a page headed up by the clearance rate for homicides where there’s no direct connection between homicider and homicidee.
It’s not some random “patriotic art,” you culturally illiterate cretin, it’s a “battlefield cross,” and it’s how we honor the fallen. It’s a tradition dating back at least as far as the civil war. You can’t leave out the rifle any more than you can leave out the helmet or boots.
Get your soft, puffy, cabbage-scented hands off our culture.
Oh no, Amy. Don’t tell little JJ that the gun is a cross, too.
His little liberal punkin’ head will really turn inside out. 🙂
Nominee, Best Rant of the Month Award
A few points, you shreeking dingbat:
I know what the battlefield cross represents.
The question is should an 8 year old kid be wearing it to middle school when there are clearly enumerated dress code rules prohibiting gun artwork on clothing worn at school.
And I don’t need a lecture from you about honoring the military. I come from a family of decorated soldiers, two of whom were buried with military honors. That means I also know that the Battlefield Cross itself is not an official military honor, it’s a somber symbolic gesture of respect, like Placing stones at grave sites or releasing white doves.
Again, why in the world would you think that appropriate for a kid to wear in middle school? Was his father or another close relative killed on the battlefield, his body un recovered and honored thusly? And do we want other kids querying him about that during lunch break?
A time and a place for everything.
Guns, military crosses, the gun used to shoot Lincoln, used to shoot JFK, used to EFK, used to shoot Reagan can grace T-shirts galore, in the schoolyard, after classes.
And surprise me, respond with something intelligent not stained with ultra conservative-propaganda
“The question is should an 8 year old kid be wearing it to middle school when there are clearly enumerated dress code rules prohibiting gun artwork on clothing worn at school.”
Your psychosis is really out tonight!
8 year olds do not, as a general rule, attend middle school.
There is no such “clearly enumerated” (or even written, you illiterate puke) dress code “with rules prohibiting gun artwork”. Not from anything we have in this report. You’re just lying. Again. Some more. As so often in the past.
READING. How does it work?
Let me guess…. You wear footie pajamas and drink cocoa in the evening while perusing Obmama’s twitter feed… don’t you?
Nope.,I drink Makers Mark and sip beer chasers while presently watching the first four seasons of Longmire on Netflix.
Now there’s a real American, who never spouts ideological gonnlygook, Liberal or Republican. There is a pompous conservative a-hole character on the show who nobody likes or respects – even his son has reservations about his character. The father’s always making puerile comments. Guess who he reminds me of?
You might want to recall that Walt carries a Winchester Model 1894, chambered in .30-30. I doubt his character would have even one iota of sympathy for a disrespectful, ignorant jackass who viewed a battlefield cross as a symbol of violence.
You are one dense Sand Dog.
I said the battlefield cross is a somber symbolic gesture of respect (can’t you read?) but one that should somberly be respected away from middle schools where depictions of weapons, no matter how patriotic or innocuous, are banned.
I thought conservatives like you preached that liberal schools were undermining authority and encouraging permissiveness by allowing students to ignore rules. Now here you are, doing the same thing.
And Sheriff Walt Longmire’s duty sidearm of choice is a Colt .45 with custom elk horn grips. Is it OK for a mother who’s a fan of the show to send her eight year old to that same school with a graphic of Walt with the gun in plain sight, because her kid has the constitutional right to be a fan of the show by proxy?
How about if she sent him to school with a battlefield-like-cross protest shirt showing Walt’s cowboy hat atop his rifle when the show was canceled? OK to ignore the school dress code for that too?
And if Walt had a choice of sitting and chatting in the Red Pony having a Rainier beer or two, I’d be alongside him (kindred spirits) and you’d be in the can. Walt’s a centrist, leaning to the left on social issues: his compassion for the less fortunate or forgotten members of society (like people on the Res)shows him as a man of empathy for the disadvantaged. The kind of person you’d categorize as a ‘bleeding heart.’
Yeah, you’re definitely not Longmire American. More like Jack Palance in Shane
No you didn’t. Link to where you said it. You didn’t. You didn’t even use the phrase “battlefield cross” because you didn’t even know it was a battlefield cross until you were schooled by some “dumb blonde” from Florida.
You just saw “gun!” and immediately wet yourself, and then commenced to running around waving your arms in the air trying to distract everyone from the distinct odor of urine coming from your onesies. And I bet your soft, pale, puffy hands do smell of cabbage. It’s usually the case with you all. Have you ever noticed that children and small animals instinctively back away when you approach them? That’s why. And I’m telling you that for free. #caring
I have no way to prove this:
But I did respond to your calling me a cretin above, when you first brought up the battle field cross.
The comment went through aa posted when I submitted it. I don’t know why it vanished, (I’m going through a troublesome IOS9 IPad update) but as I write first drafts in notepad, I have a copy of it and will post it there now.
Riiiight. À mauvais ouvrier point de bon outil.
*sent from my iPad, iOS 9.0.2.
Bons nageurs sont à la fin noyés
Do you think there might be an image of armed American soldiers somewhere in a book in the school’s library or in a history text book? The image on the boy’s shirt is that of a memorial for a fallen soldier. Since when is that “not appropriate? Is it appropriate for any government body to be instructing citizens on what is appropriately patriotic (as you suggest)? How did “zero tolerance” for actual weapons and real threats become a witch hunt for non-existent weapons and imagined threats? Why should anyone tolerate what “zero tolerance” has become? Instituted as a “reasonable” response to school violence, it has become a method of suppressing patriotism, dissent, and political views, as well as a suspender of kids with pop-tarts shaped liked guns. That makes sense to you?
You’re missing the point, Dave.
The school has an official dress policy for all students, banning certain graphic depictions, weapons among them,
If the school policy was students were required to wear solid color shirts and no artwork was permitted, like most Catholic school dress attire, and the kid showed up with that shirt, are you saying he has a constitutional right to flaunt the school dress regulations?
If so, then another kid has the right to show up at the school with a shirt picturing Osama BinLaden with an automatic rifle strapped to his shoulder. Are you going to defend that kid if he’s told to ditch the shirt with the same constitutional verve?
The schools initiated dress codes to avoid those kinds of charged circumstances. But if ANY depictions of guns are allowed, even in innocuous context, ALL depictions of guns are allowed, even if you don’t like the context.
Are elementary schools the right venue for that?
No, you are missing the point. Anyone can write policy to state whatever it wants. I wrote policy when I worked and it contained standards I wanted, not what my employees wanted. Everything you write at LI is from the left viewpoint. Everything. That’s why it’s bullshit and doesn’t deserve a response. You will not get another from me. The left is against individual freedom, period, and you validate that over and over again.
Correct, I’m to the Left of you.
But so is Paul Ryan, if your views reflect those expressed here.
And even the views of Bill O’Rielly, scorned here as too liberal.
You even hate the views of the majority of your own party, who you slur as RINOS.
As you hate the views of a majority of Americans, who reflect my CENTRIST views.
Your views are unAmerican compared to mine.
I speak for the majority of Americans who you and yours hate.
You are the fringe; I’m the center.
And the people in the small city where the 8 year old violated the school dress code, you’ll probably hate them too, a city comprised of upper middle class Republicans, who voted in the school board, and approved the dress code.
You have a vivid psychosis. And nothing else.
I forget what’s the Second Amendment to the Constitution? You blithering moron. Just when I think you cannot say something dumber you dive in deeper.
My view of this is that a kid wearing a gun on his shirt is an early expression of his constitutional 2nd Amendment right. He can’t possess a gun by himself at that age, but he sure can be proud of the right until he is old enough to exercise it. Would the school send him home if he had a support gun rights shirt that showed no gun. A good chunk of the teachers in this country are NEA inspired gun haters. We need to drive them into some other occupation. I would like to see a school district make gun ownership a requirement for a teaching job. They wouldn’t have to carry one unless they wanted to and were licensed, just own one.
A battlefield cross is not even an expression of “gun rights” so much as it is a memorial to those who bore arms and made the ultimate sacrifice in our defense. The kid’s shirt is not screeching some NRA slogan, it’s just a mark of respect for those who died in service to our country. Something that used to be completely nonpartisan, and offensive to no-one.
If Alan was unjustly arrested like Ahmed was,I’d see your point.
Answer to bonus question?
NEVER.
Well since the kid did bring a mock bomb to school and did continue to display it after he was told not to it looked like a bomb and if I had been there I would have blown it in place along with every other bomb guy I know I think you should turn this sideways and shove it straight up your lying sack of shit ass.
“No, it’s to keep disruptive images out of school as much as possible. And to be consistent doing that.”
And there is the problem. A silly rule that specifies that an image is disruptive BEFORE it’s even been disruptive.
It’s the creation of arbitrary standards that specific images such as guns will create a disturbance without
(continuing)
any evidence that the image will do so.
We’ve created a society where we’ve been trained to elevate pop tart shapes and tshirts as the cause of evil and twisted minds, then after school we send kids back home to watch tv packed with violent depictions of death and no one even says a peep.
Here’s a thought that seemed to work for generations…if a child actually caused a disturbance for any reason, clothing included, a sane and mature administrator would deal with the problem and include a teacher, parent or any other party in the communication if necessary. Of course, that requires sane and mature adults, because after all, the vast majority of children seem to possess farr more resilient minds than adults these days.
“Standing for those who stood for us.”
No way we can expose our public school children to this sort of hateful rhetoric. Next thing we know they’ll be wanting to stand for those who stood for them, too. Such expressions of gratitude are not to be tolerated. Anything related in any way to the military must be banned. These are not people for whom we want our kids feeling thankful.
(It’s an ages-old long-term psy-op practice straight out of communist reeducation manuals – you treat even the hint of a whisper of a weapon with hysterical overreaction, treating it as a rule-book encoded great offense, and over time kids develop an induced aversion to guns and will be made more open to gun bans later on. It is code-euphemized as ‘zero tolerance for the protection of the children’ to make it easier to sell to school personnel and easier for them to sell it to parents).
The school dress code doesn’t ban military subjects, Henry.
It bans ‘weapons.’
A shirt with a reproduction of Washington crossing the Delaware wouldn’t be banned.
A reproduction of Custer’s Last Stand would.
You don’t really believe school dress codes banning depictions of guns is a psy-op Communist plot, do you? And what would the purpose of doing that be again? To make kids less interested in guns when they grow up? That strategy hasn’t worked banning sexually suggestive artwork fro the classroom, has it. In fact, it has had just the opposite effect, producing the hornyist generation of Americans ever.
And Henry, just curious, but does the West Point dress code allow cadets to wear shirts with artwork of any kind while in class there? If a cadet showed up to class with the same shirt the kid wore, wouldn’t the cadet get his ass chewed out?
“The school dress code doesn’t ban military subjects, Henry.
It bans ‘weapons.’”
Well, no, lying SOS it does not. Not unless you have a link to the code in question, because the TV report expressly said the code was silent about “guns”.
Now, if it’s “weapons”, let’s see it applied to a graphic with a baseball bat on it. Or a fire engine company with an ax. Or a brick, bottle, or rock. Of course, a fist from a local martial arts school would work, too.
See? You’re just a moron with a severe personality disorder, or worse…
I always love it when our Moby Troll gets caught out in the open like he has here. It’s very revealing!
One of the things it reveals is his mean-spirited…but usually WRONG…read on history.
According to his assholiness, dress codes derived from the nattering of conservative nannies.
This shows historical (in every possible use of the term) ignorance of American cultural history. Ever see an Andy Hardy movie? Boys in small-town middle America wore shirts and ties, with a jacket to school. Every day. Girls wore “school dresses”, which were one notch down from their Sunday best. Even in very poor areas of rural America, this was the norm. And it had been for a long as there were community schools (which were NOT funded by any government at all initially).
There have been dress codes in American schools forever. Just like there’ve been laws in America forever. But neither a code or a law is necessarily a good code or law. They really have to make sense. And they have to be applied by adults with sense.
Here, the application of this code on this pretext simply makes no sense. I doubt very seriously you’d find one kid who had their bowels in an uproar over this shirt, but you COULD easily find an idiot administrator with an advanced degree from a college of education who had the squirts over a graphic on a shirt.
So, who’s the “disruptive influence”?
“Battlefield cross”? Wasn’t the crucifix the preferred instrument of a slow, painful, public death for crimes against Rome as a deterrent to others so inclined to do the same? If that isn’t violent, tell me why not.
A depiction of General Washington crossing the Delaware River would be appropriate? If I recall correctly, all the people on those boats were heavily armed and intent on killing equally armed Hessians allied with British troops on the other side of the river.
Centuries of world history and the writings of the church show that the cross is the symbol of victory over sin and salvation granted due to Christ’s willing sacrifice. It has been that since before Charlemagne was crowned in 800 AD.
If we were living in 72BC getting crucified on the Appian Way I could see your point. You’re only 2000 years out of date.