Quote:First of all, when I addressed children of military members, I was referring to this, although in this case the boy's older brother is the military member.

 

Is this t-shirt threatening?  Does it "depict violence" as outlined in the original story?

 

 

 

Second, when I referred to the NRA, I was talking about kids who are actually members of the organization.  Here are a couple of quotes from the the article that are kind of ironic.

 

 

So given the rules in bold above, does this shirt violate that policy?

 

 

 

As far as my comment regarding liberals... can you honestly say with a straight face that the school administrators that thought this shirt violated school policy could possibly be conservative?

 

And now we have a kid getting reprimanded for a Star Wars t-shirt...  think about that...

The supporting the troops shirt made no sense to ban. If it was a depiction of combat or a troop pointing a gun at something, whatever, sure, but it wasn't.

 

I don't have any problem with saying no to the NRA shirt. In the minds of many, that shirt would present a violent message. The role of school administrators is not to be thought police, it's to prevent conflict caused by clothing. In that case, they did their jobs by removing a piece of clothing that was likely to cause conflict from the equation. By the logic you're applying here--the student's status as an NRA member entitling them to wear an NRA shirt--if a kid was part of a Klan group, they should be allowed to wear "protect your race" shirts with images of burning crosses on them to school. It doesn't fly.

 

I can't say what the political leanings of the administrators were, but I can say that West Virginia has always been a conservative Democrat state, with that shifting dramatically to a heavily Republican balance of late. Speculate all you want, but it's not like that happened in California. Again, the job of a school administrator with regards to clothing decisions is to prevent conflict. How is wearing a shirt that has a message many would consider to be threatening and a picture of a gun on it any different than wearing all blue in a Bloods school at LA?

 

Tougher dress codes would prevent all of this foolishness and let us focus on educating students instead of whether or not what they're wearing violates our delicate sensibilities almost as much as telling them to take it off would.

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