Gresham Middle Schooler Suspended For Wearing Support the Troops Shirt

The culture war continues.

On Wednesday, Gresham eighth-grader Alan Holmes wore a shirt with a classic fallen soldier memorial on it to Dexter McCarty Middle School. He was asked to remove it due to a gun, which is part of the design. According to KATU News, when he refused to switch shirts, he received in-school suspension for a day.

This is pretty standard middle school stuff—all the detentions I got in middle school were direct results of teachers telling me to do something based on a rule I thought was stupid, me refusing to do the thing, me being punished (Mr. Weinstein, I will never forget your tyranny regarding backpacks in class).

However, in light of the mass shooting in Roseburg, Ore. earlier this month, people everywhere are a bit sensitive about depictions of guns and when, as KATU says, the schools dress code explicitly prohibits kids from "wearing any clothes promoting alcohol, drugs, tobacco or violence," it's a good bet those rules are going to be strictly enforced.

Of course, the eight-grader, whose big brother served in Iraq, doesn't necessarily see the connection between his shirt and Roseburg.

"This isn't relating to violence," Holmes told KATU. "The barrel is pointing down—total gun safety."

The only response the District gave KATU was: "An image of a gun is not appropriate in a school setting."

Fox News is on it. The New York Daily News is on it. Etc. Etc.

Ah, middle school dress-code violations, ground zero of all culture wars. Is it time to instate prison jumpers as a uniform for all middle schoolers nationwide? If they were in school colors, would this really be so bad?

UPDATE 3:21 pm: The Gresham-Barlow School District has posted about the t-shirt incident on their Facebook page, saying that Holmes wasn't actually suspended.

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