Eighth Grader Suspended Over Pro-Military Vet T-Shirt
An eighth grader says he was suspended for wearing a T-shirt in support of military veterans — a decision that’s left him “heartbroken,” as he wore it to honor his older brother, a Marines vet who served in Iraq.
“My brother, he means everything for me,” Alan Holmes, a student at the Dexter McCarty Middle School in Gresham, Ore., told KATU News. “Just being able to help and give back to the people who fought and died for us, it just makes me feel good.”
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School principal John George did not respond to a request for comment from Yahoo Parenting, and also would not comment in local news reports, citing confidentiality requirements. But the school dress code, available online, bans clothing with “violence related references” (as well as those relating to drugs or alcohol, profanity, and obscenities), and Alan’s shirt featured an image of a rifle, along with combat boots, a combat helmet and the phrase “Standing for those who stood for us.”
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When George confronted Alan this week, he asked him to change his shirt into a school T-shirt, but the student refused — even when he was given the ultimatum to either change, or receive an in-school suspension. “I’m not changing into a Dexter shirt,” Alan told Fox 12. “They won’t let me wear a shirt that supports the people who keep us free, I’m not going to support them.”
The boy’s father, Charles Holmes, told Fox 12 that he supports his stance. “I would’ve done the same thing,” he said. (No one in the Holmes family could be reached for comment by Yahoo Parenting.)
Eighth-grader Alan Holmes. (Photo: Fox 12)
According to KATU, Alan does understand how sensitivities may be extra high right now, due to the most recent school shootings. But he insists the military rifle is not a violent image.
Still, his is not the first school to implement a zero tolerance policy when it comes to guns — real, depicted, or even imagined. Last year, a high school in upstate New York banned a National Guard recruiter from doling out T-shirts that featured a silhouette image of a soldier holding a rifle. In that case, the superintendent defended the decision, noting, “This has nothing to do with patriotism, nothing to do with anybody disliking the military… It just has to do with the fact that there was a weapon on the shirt and that just doesn’t have a place in a high school.”
Other cases within recent years have included a 7-year-old boy in Maryland being suspended for pointing a Pop-Tart he had bitten into a gun shape; an Illinois high schooler told to change out of his U.S Marines shirt, which featured an image of two intersecting rifles (his high school later relented); and a 6-year-old who got suspended for pointing his finger like gun and saying “Pow.” These and other incidents prompted Conservative columnist Leah Barkoukis to lament, “As the gun control debate rages on, common sense seems to have been hijacked by hyper-paranoia and zero-tolerance policies in schools across the nation.”
On KATU’s Facebook page, where Alan’s story has been shared more than 650 times, hundreds of commenters weighed in, most in support of the boy’s “patriotism” and saying the school has “gone too far.” Still, others note that the presence of a gun on the shirt made it inappropriate and against the rules. “This shirt has a gun on it,” notes one mom. “I wouldn’t have let my kid go to school with it on. There are lots of other patriotic shirts that he could have worn that didn’t break school rules.”
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(Top photo: KATU)
