Okay, another straight guy saying the poor girl really shouldn’t be wearing red, and needs some make up help, too.
As for the dress - it’s about what I’d expected. (BTW, isn’t that “Confederate” flag the CSA Navy’s battle flag? How the Hell did that become the emblem of the Confederacy?)
I’m just not sure I buy the idea that a prom can be seperated from the school sponsoring it. If, as is being argued here, the prom is private function by a private group, they need bylaws and the like, and I’ve never heard of such things being part of a prom. Usually, in my limited experience, proms are considered by school hand books to be another school sponsored event, why else is the principal considered the final arbiter of the event? If it is a school event, then all the normal protections of such are in play. If it’s not a school event, what does the principal have to do with it? I don’t see how it can be played both ways.
Considering that the dress, while in questionable taste politically, meets every other standard I can think of for acceptable formal attire, I’m afriad I don’t see that it is something that could be banned as a one-of-a-kind addition to the rules for the prom without being seen as a gag order. After all, the principal never even tried to update the prom guidelines (so far as the story reports, at least) to make it improper to wear potentially offensive regalia. All this girl needs to make the suit a slam dunk is one photograph of a boy at the prom with a confederate flag belt buckle, or pin. Something I believe that at a large, rural high school, is a probability approaching one.
There seems to be a consensus that proms are private functions that take place in school facilities. If that’s the case, then, yeah, they’re no different than the local Scouts troop using the gym or caf. to meet. It’s been a long time, but I honestly don’t remember if, at my high school, the prom was funded with private donations, or came out of the school budget. We had lots of school dances which I doubt required a fundraiser each time to put on. Maybe this sort of thing varies from district to district?
I think the prom is different at different schools.
I went to a private Catholic school so my expiernece with proms is probably different than public schools.
At my school, it was ‘tradition’ that the Junior class pay for or host the Jr. Sr. prom. This baciscally allowed the Sr. Class to concentrate on rasing money for their Sr. Class Trip. However they were school events and Sister Jane had final say over anything and everthing.
My joke post earlier actually had a serious idea behind it. If, as some supporters of the flag dress maintain, the Stars and Bars is just a mild reminder of days gone by, with no powerful symbolism to be understood to be attached to it, then surely no one could possibly objects to its repurposing as a design as a urinal splash guard. The crossed bards would in fact aid in aiming. If it’s suitable for the one, it’s suitable for the other, it seems to me.
But that’s *not * what people are claiming. What *is * being claimed is that the Confederate flag represents to them their heritage, warts and all. So your “joke” is that it would be funny to piss on someone’s heritage.
Can you see how some people might take offense to that?
To put it in another light, suppose the school made recitation of the rosary and the Lord’s Prayer a requirement for entrance to the prom. What portion of the Constitution would that violate?
Hint: the Establishment Clause. Of the… um… First Amendment.
And, I mean, isn’t there a point in which common sense overrides specific dress codes. I’m sure that my old high school had a dress code, and I’m sure that there were some things that weren’t explicitly laid out in it that one just ought to know to not wear. If someone came in and got in trouble for wearing, say, a shirt with a picture of Jews eating Christian babies with blood and guts and veins in their teeth, even though that wasn’t expressly forbidden in the dress code, I wouldn’t blame the school for not having made the rule plain, I’d blame the student for not exercising common sense.
Now, I’m not suggesting that this girl’s dress is anything on par with that, but my point is that just because there isn’t a paper trail signed in triplicate that forbids dresses made of confederate flags doesn’t mean that she is absolved of responsibility. Particularly because she knew ahead of time it wasn’t going to be acceptable anyway.
Sorry, Bricker, but that doesn’t wash in this case. She wasn’t wearing the dress to school. She was wearing it to an optional, after-school activity. That removes it from the protection offered by Tinker, Burnside, etc.
The Old South was in the same league of evil as Nazi Germany. Period.
They each picked another race of human beings, defined them as less than human, and treated them with utter inhumanity. The fact that in one case they were exterminating them and in the other they were treating them as property to be exploited for economic gain is academic. The only things that make Nazi Germany seem so much worse to us today are that it was more recent, not in our backyard, and wanted to conquer the world.
(Note: 50% of my heritage is old south. I’m a direct descendant of an antebellum plantation owner.)
Anyhow, as to the question of the 1st amendment and schools, it’s a slightly subtle one, if I can cast my mind back to when I was studying this many years ago. In addition to the types of speech that are always unprotected (libel, slander, invasion of privacy, fighting words, etc.), there’s another category which the courts have determined applies to speech at school, namely, something that will cause “a substantial disruption of the school day”. It’s not a stretch for me to see confederate flags making it difficult for black students to learn, or to enjoy their prom.
I think everyone should go reread the post by monstro.
Do you really not get what I said? silenus said, “Gotta go with the OP here. Since when is the prom covered by the First Amendment?” I pointed out that if the school required a rosary and a prayer before entering the prom, THAT would be covered by the First Amendment. So the issue here is a First Amendment issue. My thought experiment was intended to show how there is state action, and that a prom, if sponsored by the school, is covered by the First Amendment.
Well, you agree that the prom’s optional, after-school status would not permit school officials to require a prayer. That’s pretty standard First Amendment covered ground, right?
So you agree that the prom is covered by the First Amendment. You’re arguing that the First Amendment doesn’t ptotect her particular conduct - not that the prom is not subject to First Amendment analysis.
Good job of completely missing the whole point of my post. I was pointing out that one person’s (hyper-)sensitivity does not mean that everyone else should never do anything to offend that person.
Boy is that over the top. For starters let me suggest to you that there is, in fact, a difference between seeing one race as inferior to yours on the one hand and trying to completely obliterate the entire race on the other. For example, I may see you as an inferior poster to others on this board and treat you with contempt. That may be arrogant and wrong of me, but it’s not in the same league as wanting to kill you.
You do realize that Slavery in the South was a little more shall we say, “intense”, than just treating people with comtempt…but hey, I don’t want to seem Hyper-sensitive.
I don’t know. I think I might prefer a “quick” death in an oven, than years of the whip, of humilation and watching the Lord of Manor rape my wife, my daughter; then sell them while I watched…helpless and know that my children had the same fate in store for them and their children…
How about you? Which is the lessor of two evils? Death or life as a Slave?
Acutally, I don’t realize that. I’d say that two of the 5 or 10 greatest evils ever committed by mankind are the holocaust and the overall treatment of blacks in slavery in the Americas, counting the kidnapping, transportation, beatings, separations of families, etc. The goal may have been less monstrous, but the total amount of suffering inflicted was probably greater.
