According to ABC 13, Colton Southern wore a shirt to George Junior High School in Rosenberg, Texas, last Thursday that depicted “the Star Wars – The Force Awakens logo, along with a Storm Trooper holding a weapon.”
Administrators then had the 7th grader cover up the t-shirt due to a policy in the school handbook which doesn’t allow “symbols oriented toward violent.” A spokesperson for Lamar Consolidated Independent School District says that administrators cited this policy when requiring Southern to zip up his sweatshirt.
His father, Joe Southern, was upset with the decision of school officials, saying, “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.”
According to the Washington Post, Actually, even T-shirts depicting real weapons are constitutionally protected against K-12 school discipline, unless there’s real evidence that the T-shirts are likely to substantially disrupt the educational process (something that’s highly unlikely here); categorical bans on all depictions of weapons, regardless of whether they are disruptive, would be unconstitutionally overbroad.
What do you think? Should Southern have been allowed to continue displaying the shirt, or were the administrators right in their actions?
