When I saw the headline about an Anaheim high school apologizing to a student who was forced to remove her National Rifle Association (NRA) t-shirt, I thought to myself, “It can't possibly be the same Anaheim high school that caught shit last year for its 'Señores and Señoritas' event that had students dressing as gang members, border agents and pregnant women pushing baby strollers.”
Wrong again, Mateo!
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Canyon High School Kids Dress Up as “Mexicans” and Border Patrol Agents; School Officials Get Mad
Haley Bullwinkle apparently grabbed the NRA tee without thinking much about it on her way to Canyon High School, where she is a sophomore who had worn the tee on the Anaheim Hills campus before. But this time she was confronted by a school official who told her to take it off lest she face disciplinary action for violating school policy. She was handed a school shirt.
The incident prompted Bullwinkle's parents to write the school principal, concerned that their daughter's free speech rights may have been violated. The white tee shows an American flag, a silhouette of a hunter with a rifle and the slogan, “National Rifle Association of America, Protecting America's Traditions Since 1871.”
Hell, the 16-year-old should have received extra credit for showing interest in American history. Instead, all her parents got was a crummy letter from Principal Kimberly Fricker stating the school's dress code prohibits clothing that promotes or depicts violence, criminal activity, anything that's degrading to ethnic values and “anything that is divisive or offensive to a staff member.”
“The administration reserves the right to restrict any clothing or accessories that in our judgment detracts from the educational environment of Canyon High School,” reads the policy.
But on Thursday, the school apologized to Bullwinkle and informed that campus staff will be trained so that “an incident like this does not occur again.” Fricker had apparently been swayed by actually seeing the shirt as well as the statement to the media from her boss, Orange Unified School District Superintendent Michael Christensen, revealing, “The student will be permitted to wear the shirt.”
Between receipt of Fricker's original letter and the apology, Bullwinkle's parents had contacted the NRA, whose attorneys had ringy-dingy'd the school and the district. If only the lobbies for raising student test scores had such immediate power.
The real interesting thing, to me anyway, is this was the same school that produced sights like this last year (and years before, apparently):
At least school officials are consistent: As the Mexican-in-Chief our Gabriel San Roman reported at the time, administrators quickly had the faux Latinos and Latinas and border patrollers remove their offending garb. The district superintendent didn't even have to weigh in; indeed, no school or district officials said a peep at the time, at least not to the Weekly.
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.