You
probably heard about the five-year old Michigan fan, a kindergarten student,
who was in violation of his school’s dress code for wearing a University of Michigan-themed
tee-shirt. He had to turn the shirt inside out. In his school’s district,
students may only wear Oklahoma or Oklahoma State-themed apparel.
Like
most stupid rules, this dress code is based on well-meaning logic. Gangs
sometimes use sports teams as their colors and so limiting the teams
represented on shirts at a school is a way to combat gang influence.
A
similar thing happened to my son when he was a high school freshman and we attended
a football game at his school.
Sean
had a Superman hat. It was a baseball cap and, if I recall accurately, he got
it after riding the Superman ride at Magic Mountain. I think it was
cammo-colored. Anyhow, he liked the hat and wanted to wear it. There was a
dress code at school that barred the cap but neither Sean nor I were aware that
the dress code extended to football games.
So
off we went to this game and we hadn’t been there long before Sean said he
wanted to go to the snack bar, which he did. He came back with a teacher who
explained that Sean could not wear the hat, that it violated the dress code. He
had to leave the stadium.
I
took the hat from Sean and stuck it inside my jacket. The teacher went away and
I gave the cap back to Sean. I guess I’m a little stubborn. Anyway, Sean was
back a few minutes later with the same teacher. Sean could now surrender the
cap or leave the stadium. Failure to do one or the other would end in a
suspension.
Well,
I wasn’t going to surrender the cap. I asked if the school would refund my ticket,
which the teacher explained was my problem. Then I put the hat on my head and
asked if the rule extended to adults, which the teacher said it did not.
Thus,
the same cap was legal on my head and illegal on my son’s head. Very simply the
dumbest thing I’d ever heard of. Either the cap was legal or illegal. It couldn’t
be both. I explained my opinion of
the rule to the teacher, who was becoming less enamored with my stand on the
subject with every word I used.
Of
course, my opinion of the hat rule was colored by the fact that Sean was forced
to sit on the football field for the entire first week of school while the
students who had not registered were placed in class. We had registered Sean very
early in the registration period, but the unregistered kids got seats in
classrooms while the registered kids sat on the football field.
Tremendous
decision making by the school’s administrators. Brilliant.
And
when Sean finally got a chance to sit in a classroom, he didn’t get the book
for one of his classes for three weeks. Notes to the teacher didn’t work. I had
to go to a district board meeting and speak during the public comments portion
of the meeting to get the kid his book. I gave an excellent talk. I carried a stopwatch because public comments are
limited to three minutes. Every time a board member interrupted my dissertation,
I held my stopwatch in the air and stopped it. I wanted my full three minutes.
Sean
finally got his book but I had a low opinion of the school’s administration
before we started the hat dance at the football game.
We
ended up leaving the game early. Rules are rules and I usually respect even the
dumbest ones. But, as a former newspaperman, I’d have loved to write this
headline: Superman Cap Incites Riot at Football Game.
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