Marines T-shirt ban: Superintendent on student's side, not teacher's

A de facto Marines T-shirt ban by one Illinois teacher came under fire by school district administrators who say the shirt worn by a 14-year-old student is within the limits set by the dress code. Now the boy's father wants the dress code to be explicit so Marines T-shirts are not banned again. 

|
Associated Press
Marine T-shirt ban: After a student wore a US Marines T-shirt with two M16s on it to school, a teacher found it inappropriate and threatened suspension unless he turn the shirt inside out. The superintendent supported the boy. Now his father wants the dress code to be flushed out. Here, a 6-year-old takes part in Marine Week in Cleveland in June.

Semper forget about it. 

A 14-year-old student in Illinois donning a US Marines T-shirt with two M16 rifles layered on top the word Marines was asked by his eighth grade reading teacher to remove the shirt, citing the school's dress code. 

The teacher, Karen Deverell, said the weapon graphics made the shirt problematic, according to Foxnews.com. School district administrators have come out in support of the teenager, and now the boy's father wants the dress code policy to undergo some fine-tuning to do away with any ambiguity. 

"My son is very proud of the Marines, in fact, of all the services," Daniel McIntyre of Genoa, Ill., told Foxnews.com. "So he wears it with pride. There are two rifles crossed underneath the word 'Marines' on the shirt, but to me that should be overlooked. It's more about the marines instead of the rifles." 

Ms. Deverell told the teenager to wear his shirt inside out or be suspended. Previous school days where he wore the shirt ended without incident, Mr. McIntyre said.

Genoa-Kingston Superintendent Joe Burgess said the shirt did not violate the district's dress code. He wished the teacher would have notified school administrators, since he said they would have allowed the boy to keep wearing the shirt.

"We've been accused of a lot of things, but our middle school is well-known for its support of the armed forces," Burgess told Foxnews.com, adding later that the " ... teacher is obviously allowed to question anything they feel might be a violation of dress code, but again, had an administrator been allowed to respond, this could have been taken care of yesterday."

The Genoa-Kingston school district does take issue with clothing displaying violent behavior and gang symbols, but does not "explicitly ban images of guns and other weapons," according to Foxnews.com, which obtained a copy of the policy. 

McIntyre told Foxnews.com he believes the teacher's decision to have his son turn his shirt inside out was an overreaction to recent mass shootings, specifically the Dec. 14 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. in which 20 students were killed.

"I backed him up and he knows that," McIntyre told Foxnews.com of his son. "This is not right. This policy that they have in place can obviously be loosely interpreted, so they need to change it." 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Marines T-shirt ban: Superintendent on student's side, not teacher's
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/2013/0228/Marines-T-shirt-ban-Superintendent-on-student-s-side-not-teacher-s
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe