There’s Hope
By Mitch Berg
West Virginia teen Jared Marcum, who was arrested for wearing a pro-Second-Amendment T-shirt to school came back with 100 of his closest friends:
Jared, a student at Logan Middle School, was arrested and suspended Thursday after he was pulled from a cafeteria line and told to remove or turn his shirt inside-out an order he refused.
“I’m still confused, thoroughly confused,” he told a local TV station. “The school didn’t even make a statement to the news agencies, much less myself.”
The schools did what they always do; demand unthinking conformity and enforce it with unreasonable fury – a day’s suspension and an arrest.
Marcum points out that while he was arrested for being disorderly, the evidence tells another story:
School officials told the eighth-grader Monday that his one-day suspension was appropriate because he was being disruptive.
Mr. White said Jared was exercising his right to free speech and did not disrupt anything.
Video evidence in the case, Mr. White said, indicates that the situation in the cafeteria deteriorated when a teacher raised his voice while confronting Jared. Other students jumped up on benches and began chanting Jared’s name.
“I think the disruption came from the teacher,” Mr. White said.
Can’t wait for that video to get released on Youtube.
Marcum went back to school along with 100 fellow students who also wore Second Amendment t-shirts paid for by a local pro-human-rights group.
The more the merrier, I say.
April 24th, 2013 at 7:05 am
I hope this kid hires a really mean lawyer, and sues the school.
April 24th, 2013 at 7:09 am
Nice!
April 24th, 2013 at 8:52 am
On the one hand, I applaud the kid for standing up to silliness of his school administrators. On the other hand, where does one draw the line on what kids can wear to school?
I recently attended an in-school presentation at my kids school (a high school). A couple of t-shirts I saw on kids in the hallways were mildly profane with sexual innuendo and a few of the girls looked like they were dressed for work in the worlds oldest profession. Micro-skirts when it’s 15 degrees outside?
Maybe by way of protest, the NRA should have their logo emblazoned on the the seat of everyones pants. Is it any worse than “Juicy”?
April 24th, 2013 at 8:53 am
I think the teaching staff and administration needs some constitutional rights sensitivity training….or maybe some remedial US history and civics work in a 4th grade Texas or better yet, South Carolina classroom.
April 24th, 2013 at 9:02 am
My niece once wore a Dukes of Hazzard tee-shirt to class at one of the metro-area public schools. The shirt had a picture of the Dukes the General Lee on the front, and on the General there was a confederate flag. She was required to wear her shirt inside out because the flag was “insensitive” and “disruptive”.
April 24th, 2013 at 9:58 am
Ya know NW it’s funny you bring up the Stars & Bars. A few years ago South Carolina voted to move the state battle flag from the top of the capital to the front lawn, and a consensus had been slowly building to remove it all together.
Given the direction our federal government has been going, and judging from the conversations I’ve been having, I don’t think I’m talking out of school to predict that if that flag is moved at all, it’s going back up on top.
April 24th, 2013 at 11:02 am
Several years ago racial tensions caused the administration of Duluth’s former Central High School to prohibit what they determined to be “gang related” attire.
Included in that definition were Carhart apparel. It was determined that the “White redneck country kids” wore that brand of jeans, t-shirts, and jackets. The redneck group was considered to be the group that the “Black, hip-hop, urban, whatevers” often clashed with.
While I don’t support allowing kids to wear obviously “disruptive” clothing to school, Duluth’s tit-for-tat prohibitions could eventually lead to mandated nudity.
I know, what’s “obviously disruptive” is a very subjective determination. My old high school mandated a uniform dress code. It made things like this non-issues.