My 14 year old daughter has a black leather trenchcoat that she got for Christmas two years ago. First day she wore it to Jr. High this year, I got a call from the school informing me that she couldn’t wear it again, and oh, by the way, her very nice leather backpack that set Grandma back about $75.00 and was supposed to last her several years? Can’t use it. Have to use see thru backpacks.
We won’t even go into what happened when she wore a Vampire: the Masqurade shirt to school.
SO GLAD he’s not still in high school
My best friend James the goth got his fair deal of gothphobia right after Columbine… people staring at him and making comments, etc. Not pleasant to hear about. I immediately adopted the style in sympathy 
(No, that’s not really how it happened. I was already quite the blackclothesophile.)
I wear a black long coat when the weather is right for it. I have deformed high arched feet that make it difficult to find shoes. Since I found a pair of boots that fit pretty well I wear these a lot. The skin on my hands dries out, cracks, and bleeds if there is just the slightest chill in the air so I wear black leather gloves in weather that other folks wouldn’t need gloves in. I’m a programmer so I think having a goatee is almost mandatory where I live.
So when this black long coat wearing, booted, leather gloved guy with a goatee goes out mothers pull their children out of my way and store clerks follow me around.
Actually, I’m getting treated better lately. I suspect it’s because I’m starting to get silver in my goatee. I’m becoming respectable. It’s kind of depressing.
Mercurio, minors have less rights than adults. The rationalization is that minors haven’t reached the level of maturity that adults have. I’ve seen cases where that’s true and cases where the kids have a lot more wisdom than the adults. Your school administrators are bound by the policies that they put in place and it seems you understand those policies pretty well. Give the admin some credit for abiding by those policies and not forcing open your briefcase. True, he should not have picked you out because of your clothing. But it’s a scary world these days and school admins are desprete to make sure Colombine doesn’t happen in their school. It’s natural human tendency for them to pick out the students that don’t seem to be conform to the group. They don’t realize that the danger of violence can come from anyone in their student body, be it from the quiet kid who no one likes, or the school president who thinks he’s lost his popularity. The pure randomness of it and their inability to completly cut off the possibility of violence keeps school administrators awake at night. They are going to fall back on what they know, which doesn’t necessarily apply to your generation or class. Their best bet is to simply listen but it can be just as hard to place that kind of trust in the students as it is for the students to trust them.
Give them a little slack.
I wear a trench coat because I like Humphrey Bogart. I also have a grey fedora.
–John
The issue here, I’d be willing to wager, is that the school officials are now forced to do pre-emptive CYA. With all that’s happened, there was such and outcry of “how come nobody noticed this before?” and “why didn’t the school officials/teachers/parents notice and alert someone?” Schools are being held accountable for the actions of those in there care. If something had happened, surely someone would have come along and said “Well, all the signs were there, I’m holding you responsible!” (hindsight is such a wonderful thing :rolleyes: )
I could go on and on, but I’ll not. Instead, my parting shot is that this is another symptom of deferred accountability, it sucks and it’s sad that bad things happen to good people.