So if a group of Black students want to form a club or some sort of support group in the face of racist incidents at school or in the town they live in, the school is obliged to let the KKK form a group as well?
If a group of Jewish students form a group for whatever activity they want to do, the school is obliged to allow the local Nazi Party to organize a student group?
Additionally, I don’t believe, at least from what I understand from reading here, that it this “safe zone” was formed on the school’s initiative, but by a faculty member acting independently. Therefore the school is under no obligation whatsoever to give voice to the “opposition”.
I fully agree some action should have been taken, but I think it would have been more fitting if the student body had organized a drive of some sort around the demand that this fuckwad be prevented from wearing that shirt to school and then demanded the administration do something about it.
Schools are most certainly allowed to institute dress codes, and to prohibit attire that is disruptive to the learning environment. However, this school made a bad choice in banning one type of “pride” t-shirt. They should have either accepted all of them, or banned all of them. Schools are supposed to be non-discriminatory, and “banning” on type of pride, but not others is discriminatory.
From what i’ve seen, the kid is a dick, but that’s beside the point.
The principal handled the initial problem badly. Perhaps the school should sponser a tolerence day, and distribute t-shirts that say “Proud to be me” or “Proud of who I am”.
Everyone (especially kids in Jr. High) wants afirmation that who they are is cool and acceptable to their peer group. It’s only natural. Unfortunately, some kids find their identity by figuring out what they are not, rather then by figuring out who they are.
I am white, and of Pensylvania german descent, I am proud of the achievements of the culture I am part of. But there is a difference between being proud of who I am, and feeling the need to thumb my nose at the other cultures of this great country.
-pandora
(please excuse my spelling/grammer mistakes.)
no one asking to be allowed to bash gays. just to show their support of being straight. so i think that it would be appropriate in a school with a support group/study group for blacks, to form one for whites. and in a school forming a group for jewish kids, to form a group for christians, or muslims, or wiccans.
no one said they have a right to bash anyone else. just to say that they are different. so what if their brand of “different” happens to be a majority?
don’t you mean 50 faculty members?
[quote]
I am heterosexual, and all I get is this lousy t shirt
Do they have little Black Fist in some classrooms to represent Black Pride? Don’t black students deserve a safe zone where they can go and be free to express themselves?
Do they have little Star of Davids in some classrooms to represent Jewish Pride? Don’t Jewish students deserve a safe zone where they can go and be free to express themselves?
Do they have little Pentagrams in some classrooms to represent Pagan Pride? Don’t Pagan students deserve a safe zone where they can go and be free to express themselves?
I consider myself to be pretty supportive of human rights for all. That means I want homosexuals to have the exact same rights that I do. But I have to admit that if I were a student in high school I’d get annoyed if I started seeing little pink triangles in every other classroom. Call me an insensitive prick but I don’t think that gay students are the only ones who deserve so called “safe zones” in public schools. Although I admit I wouldn’t piss and moan about it or put on a special t-shirt.
If gay kids want some sort of designated refuge in a public school then they should form their own club. If schools wish to set up safe zones then they should be safe zones for all.
Marc
PS: What if someone wore a Gay Pride t-shirt to school. Would it be acceptable to kick them out because it offended heterosexuals?
You really can’t legislate morality. This “safe zone” sounds like a bad idea to me. What does that mean? That it’s open season everywhere else? Is it OK to beat up and anagonize gay kids outside that area?
“Look, let’s get him!”
“Oh shit, he made it to the safe zone. Damn. We’ll have to let him go.”
Who’s getting fooled with this?
I can’t imagine how this is going to change the behavior or influence those who are insensitive. If anything, it will only egg them on.
This kind of thing seems divisive, and emphasizes differences that really don’t matter, just as a “straight pride” shirt would.
I think the idea, and the connotations that “every day is straight pride day,” is just wrong. The variations of course are that every day is “white pride day,” or every day is “male pride day.”
The connotation is that there’s something shameful in being any of these things, that somehow these groups have unfairly monopolized society for there exclusive benefit, and some kind of redress is required.
On an even simpler note, it’s unsurprising that once you start paying attention to gay issues, that all kinds of other people are going to clamor for attention for their issues. It’s natural and expected. Some will be worthwhile, others will not. What else is new?
i totally agree with this. like i said, in my junior high any clothing with a logo on it was banned. it made it difficult to shop for school, and we hated it, but i can see now why they did it.
another point that i was trying to make. all of the students in the school should have someone that they can talk to and receive support from no matter what their problem is. if they are experiencing racial or sexual discrimination, if their parents are beating them up, if they just feel miserable, they should have someone to talk to.
The case of Tinker v Desmoine was about this very thing, students wearing clothing that expressed an opinion, and the ruling was the that students do not shed their rights of freedom of speech at the school house gate. period.
What the principle is doing is engaging content discrimination, something the courts frown upon. If they ban this partiicular message, and not all writing on clothing then they are violating the students rights. It doesnt matter if the student is a dick or not.
The following is from a letter the ACLU wrote to my nephew recently regarding the FWISD school dress code that he was considering challenging. The School district revised the dress code before it went any further.
> You are correct. While a public school can now require students to wear
> what
> amount to uniforms, they cannot restrict their speech by denying them the
> right to wear politcal or other messages on pins or buttons, religious
> jewelry, arm bands, etc.
You’re exactly right regarding the interpretation of my reasoning, although I think you’re taking the comparisons to extremes. Incidentally, congrats on being the first poster in the thread to bring up Nazis. I was wondering when that would happen.
If the school is going to sanction a particular group, then they have to sanction the existence of another group with differing views. Ideally, the school would have refused to sanction any group on campus that didn’t have some rationale for existence that wasn’t related to the school in some way. I doubt students in the Nazi Party would have much of an argument if they went to the school board and said “You allow students to play in the school band, so we want to have Nazi Club meetings.” The two are mutually exclusive. However, if the school says “We’re gonna allow students to start a Jewish Club,” then they’ll have to be ready to accept the Nazi Club (when and if it forms) as well.
Let me give you a real-world example (and this is coming from small-town Alabama, 20 years ago). An organization called the Fellowship of Christian Athletes was active at my high school. A few people of differing opinions went to the principal and said “We want to form our own club, the Fellowship of Satanic Non-Athletes.” The principal was against it at first. But after some thought, he decided to let them do it. I knew a couple of the guys who were involved. They got very excited about their victory over “the man” and started planning all these rituals they’d have at their meetings. To my knowledge, they held exactly one meeting. They weren’t really Satanists; they were just trying to get a rise out of the administration. Once they were given permission to meet, the reason for their existence was lost.
If the school has allowed posters with the “gay pride” symbol to be affixed to its walls in classrooms, it is giving tacit approval (whether the administration officially grants it or not) for that viewpoint to be displayed. If it is to apply the same standards to everyone, it cannot then tell a student he can’t wear a “straight pride” T-shirt.
In my opinion, it was idiotic of the administration to condone placement of the safe-zone posters in the first place. If it had no bearing on school-sponsored activities, it shouldn’t be there. That prevents this type of problem from occurring (and also neutralizes the whole black/Nazi or Jewish/KKK club scenario; none of those would be applicable).
And I don’t really think that a Public School is the appropriate place for students or teachers to be “expressing” their sexuality, be it Gay, Bi, Straight, Hermaphroditic, Necrophiliac, etc.
I am proud because the gay movement has made so much progress in achieving recognition and respect, despite prejudice against them because of their sexual orientation.
If the school has had to establish a zone where gay kids can feel safe, doesn’t that imply that they don’t feel safe elsewhere? Can’t you find an ounce of compassion in yourself for these children, in the middle of a difficult part of their lives, who are afraid to tell their friends who they really are, for fear of being abused? Can you imagine what it’s like to wonder if that person you have a crush on will beat the crap out of you if he finds out? It takes the adolescent fear of rejection and magnifies it enormously.
The school in question took an admirable step in recognizing the additional challenges being faced by a number of its students, and did something to help them cope.
The school’s reaction to the t-shirt kid is proof that no-one on the administration reads these boards. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have ignored one of the most vital commandments of all… Do Not Feed The Trolls.
I wonder what would have happened had the principal let this kid wear his shirt. The boy might come into school the next day with some other slogan pasted across his chest; one that would be worse (like “Porn Star 69”). Then again, maybe the boy would come into school wearing a plain white t-shirt. Who’s to say?
I also wonder what would have happened if the kid had just kept his mouth shut, instead of explaining “Straight Pride” as an adversarial slogan to the pink triangles and the Safe Zones. He could have behaved in certain ways to reduce the storm about him – like publicly proclaiming how he fully accepts people who aren’t straight.
How would you handle this situation? The principal at our school would chat with the student first, rather than censure the kid for not being P.C. The boy’s principal, in my opinion, overreacted. Then the boy overreacted, and controversy arose.
i never said it was wrong for the school to give support to the gay kids. but why only gay kids? yes, they’ve got it tough, but so do a lot of other kids.
i wouldn’t even venture to say that all gay kids necessarily have a harder time than all straight kids. i know that at least a few gay kids in my conservative suburb school had no fears about proclaiming their sexuality. they knew that there were enough open-minded students that would be willing to take up their cause if they were threatened. myself included.
but what about kids in abusive homes? or with drug problems? or who might be pregnant? they need help, too.
At the university where I work, safe zone posters are hung in the classrooms and offices of faculty and staff who have elected to take some sensitivity training dealing with issues of alternate sexualities. Members of safe zone are expected to offer information, sensitivity and understanding towards lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues on campus.
So, to sum up, safe zones aren’t meant to dictate the behaviour of students within the “zone,” but provide GLBT students with some sign that they can approach a prof and speak openly without being attacked or judged. Since suicide is a problem among gay teens, providing this kind of support within a high-school setting as well seems appropriate.
Whoa… hyperbole much? One idiot running around in a “Straight Pride” sweatshirt does not carry the connotation of a hundred years of terrorism, lynching and civil rights denial. Nor does it equate to crematoriums, Zyklon-B and twelve million people exterminated in one of the most horrific episodes in human history.
If the Gay and Lesbian Support Club was advocating the lynching of stray straight students and wanted to build burning traingles in random straight students’ lawns, then perhaps the KKK should be represented. If the GLSC was to run around advocating the extermination of their chosen scapegoats, then the Nazi Youth Party might be allowed to organize a chapter in the school. Since they are not equivalent, I dont’ think there’s much worry of crossing that line any time soon.
The response of the kid and his parents certainly implies that this wasn’t an impromptu fashion choice. He (and one would think they) seem to be very aware of how the school was going to react and they seem ready to take advantage of it and turn it into a causus belli for the right wing. Whether or not the student is beign “guided” by his parents or he has done this completely on his own, he’s still a ‘tool’. He’s not very sharp, there seem to be a few patches of rust and I really wish someone would stick him back in a dark shed and lock the fucking door.
That said, I don’t see how the school can allow the symbols or mottos of Gay Pride while banning the same for “Straight Pride”. As mentioned by bdgr mentioned, Tinker v. Des Moines seems to be directly on point.
There might be a little wiggle room in the idea of “special characteristics of the school”, but it seems a little bit of a stretch to allow one phrase or symbol when the “equivalent” phrase is disallowed, no matter how ridiculous or idiotic it is. The phrase “Straight Pride” is not patently offensive, even though it might be combative and adversarial in nature. (Not to mention both redundant and inane.)
According to the article, he’d worn the shirt on several occasions. The shirt was a reflection of his personal taste—just as the people in my high school who wore ‘Anarchy’ shirts and ‘Carnivores are Murderers’ slogans. It’s not like he wore something intentionally geared to garner immediate administrative response such as, say, a human head on a necklace.
The administration, apparently, was informed by one individual who ‘spoke for gay and lesbian students.’ Where I come from, they used petitions, as well as a ‘committee’—EVERYONE had a committee, it seemed—and the Principal would be regularly inundated with groups of students requesting audience. They finally declared specific days that he would meet with the ‘Action Committee’ leaders. It was then determined which course of action should be taken—to defer to the request of the students, or not.
We even had a SAFE club—the acronym standing for Student Action For Equality. It was not an administrative effort, but it was sanctioned by the administration.
I agree with the OP. This is a double standard. It is unfair to have 50 staff members promoting one paradigm while quashing another. They saw fit to eschew concern from the ‘straight’ population when the SAFE posters went up—let them exercise a bit of tolerance themselves.
Especially for something as utterly nondescript as ‘Straight Pride.’
My gay friends have a sense of humor, and also understand that people are free to think as they please. The last thing they want to do is further the misinformation they are ‘intolerant of straight people’ and that their greatest desire is to slam anyone who doesn’t approve.
I find it unfortunate that we don’t get to hear the gay students’ perspective in this—I have a feeling more than one of them would’ve said ‘who cares?’
Is there reason to believe that services are not available to these kids in the school in question? My friend is a high school counseler, and they provide pregnancy counseling, drug counseling, etc.
I don’t understand the argument of “what about the other kids needs”. Are gay students the only ones offered assistance at that school?
I have compassion for gay teens and pre-teens. They deserve a tremendous amount of respect for being honest with themselves and their friends regarding their sexuality. However, their views aren’t automatically more valid than anyone else’s.
Actually, the school did nothing actively. They provided tacit approval of the “safe zone” initiative by allowing individual teachers to display the posters. This wasn’t an initiative sponsored by the school.
If you ask me, the school administration played a large role in the creation of this particular “troll” in the first place.