Young Master Colton Southern is a student at George Junior High School in Rosenberg, Texas and a Star Wars enthusiast. In fact, he’s so looking forward to the seventh film in the series that he decided to buy a Star Wars: The Force Awakens t-shirt and wear it to school. Much to his surprise, this caused panic and confusion amongst school administrators, who told him that the shirt was banned. Why? Because it showed a Stormtrooper holding a blaster rifle . . .
Apparently an image of a fictional character holding a fictional weapon in a fictional galaxy in a fictional past constitutes a “symbol oriented toward violence,” which is forbidden by district policy. KTRK has the story.
Joe Southern says his son, Colton, wore a shirt depicting the “Star Wars – The Force Awakens” logo, along with a Storm Trooper holding a weapon, to class Thursday at George Junior High School. He’s apparently worn it to school several times before without any issue.
On Thursday, though, school officials told Colton the shirt was banned because it has a gun, or at least a picture of what in the movie is weapon….
A spokesperson for Lamar Consolidated Independent School District says the LCISD secondary school handbook spells out potential violations of dress code. The list includes “symbols oriented toward violence.”
Administrators say they did not reprimand the student, though they could have required him to change or assigned him in-school suspension. They say they only required him to zip up his jacket.
Mr. Southern found the administrators’ lack of faith…disturbing:
“It’s political correctness run amok. You’re talking about a Star Wars t-shirt, a week before the biggest movie of the year comes out. It has nothing to do with guns or making a stand. It’s just a Star Wars shirt,” Southern said….
Of course, young Kenobi Colton is partly wrong. This story has everything to do with guns and freedom of speech. It’s simply an attempt by local school administrators to keep students in line with their anti-gun agenda by means of fear. Fear of their arbitrary power to penalize and suspend those stray from the approved orthodoxy.
Still, the administrators of the Lamar Consolidated Independent School District shouldn’t be too proud of this pedagogical terror they’ve created. A number of court cases in the past have held that the First Amendment does, indeed, apply to public schools. Students’ rights to symbolic speech — whether it was wearing a black armband to protest American involvement in the Vietnam War, or a t-shirt that read “I (heart) Boobies!” to promote awareness of the risks of breast cancer — have been repeatedly upheld.
Ironically, as TTAG reported earlier, The Force Awakens director, J.J. Abrams, is a bit of an anti-gun dark-sider himself. Perhaps Colton is, in his own way, just a way of restoring balance to the Force?
I certainly hope so. Because putting aside any discussions of civil rights, law, and philosophy here for a moment, there’s one thing I can tell you from real practical experience: wearing Star Wars-related t-shirts in high school does absolutely nothing to improve a guy’s dating prospects.
(H/T: Taylor Millard @ hotair.com.)
DISCLAIMER: The above is an opinion piece; it is neither legal nor dating advice, nor does it create an attorney-client relationship in any sense. If you need legal advice in any matter, you are strongly urged to hire and consult your own counsel. If you need dating advice, there are probably better places to get it than a blog post on firearms news. This post is entirely my own, and does not represent the positions, opinions, or strategies of my firm or clients.