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You are here: Home / Petty Principal’s Principles

Petty Principal’s Principles

by John Cole|  June 13, 20056:16 pm| 17 Comments

This post is in: General Stupidity

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Sometimes you have to wonder if there is anyone more rigid and doctrinaire than school administrators ( some of the extreme feminists spring to mind, for some reason). Via Everyman (who has his own thoughts), we see this tale:

Jim and Kim Kiernan decided to challenge the custom in the name of their son Steven, who just finished Marine boot camp. They’d like to see him graduate from Petaluma High School on June 11 in his military uniform.

But school principal Mike Simpson says it’s against school policy. Simpson is bent on preserving what he calls a “traditional focus.” Steven Kiernan can wear his military uniform, said Simpson, but along with the other 300 members of the graduating class of 2005, he must wear it under “the uniform of the day,” the cap and gown.

So change the damned rule. Make an exception. The kid could be dead or missing a leg by graduation next year. Show some damned respect.

Is there anything more annoying than the legalistic and simple-minded zero tolerance than is going on in High Schools? The first thing you see in many schools is an extended list of what you can’t do. I blame the French. Or lawyers. Either way.

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Reader Interactions

17Comments

  1. 1.

    Joey

    June 13, 2005 at 6:31 pm

    Amen. Between getting suspended for having tylenol and idiocy like this, no wonder our schools are so screwed up. Common sense is dead, esp. in schools.

  2. 2.

    JG

    June 13, 2005 at 6:38 pm

    When you graduate you wear a gown. Its tradition. I had to do it, you did, so did everyone else. There are big problems in this country. This ain’t one of them. Put on the f’in gown, get your sheepskin and go get drunk with everyone else. I, along with just about everyone else in my graduating class got new clothes for the occasion knowing full well that no one would be able to see them. I didn’t care. Frankly I’d be wanting to know why the Marine thinks he’s too good to wear the gown. Why does he get treated different? Again there are real problems out there. This isn’t one of them. I’d be worried about Congress stepping in and creating a toothless law to help this individual but I doubt there’s a lot of fund raising possibilties here so Santorum will probably stay out of it.

  3. 3.

    ppgaz

    June 13, 2005 at 7:27 pm

    Wow, common sense just abounds on this topic.

    Put on the f-in’ gown, for crying out loud, who cares?

    Let ’em wear the f-in’ uniform, for crying loud, who cares?

    The common thread is … who cares? Why does anyone care enough about this to make a fight over it, from either side, or from out here?

  4. 4.

    Rick

    June 13, 2005 at 8:24 pm

    God or Zeus may smite me with a lightning bolt, but I agree with JG’s overall sentiment.

    Because surely there will be some “look at me” goofball trying to make an ACLU case out of some other need to display an out-of-context clothing article. Along the lines of a Che t-shirt.

    In that instance, I expect Barbara Lee and Jim McDermott will get fired up. Now I’m even with JG. ;)

    Cordially…

  5. 5.

    JPS

    June 13, 2005 at 8:27 pm

    JG:

    “Frankly I’d be wanting to know why the Marine thinks he’s too good to wear the gown.”

    I’m not sure he does. Maybe he’s proud to be a Marine and prefers the uniform to cap and gown.

    “Why does he get treated different?”

    He doesn’t, but he should. This kid has pledged his life to protect, among others, yours and mine. The exception he’s asking for is not one involving disrespect to the school.

    No one’s saying there ought to be a law, just that we’d much prefer that the principal grant the request. What’s the harm?

    ppgaz: “Why does anyone care enough about this to make a fight over it, from either side, or from out here?”

    Because, as John put it, it’s a question of respect. Some principles are worth getting heated over, as I’d venture you quite often agree.

  6. 6.

    ppgaz

    June 13, 2005 at 8:39 pm

    No, it’s a question of people getting riled up about things which are none of their business.

    The pricipals in the story are adults. They’ll handle it as the see fit. It’s none of my business, and it’s none of your business.

    Absent a runaway bride to beat gums about, or a good adbuction, or a good man bites dog story …

    Oh, never mind.

  7. 7.

    John Cole

    June 13, 2005 at 8:51 pm

    It is a big deal because the principla and the student chose to make it a big deal.

  8. 8.

    ppgaz

    June 13, 2005 at 9:03 pm

    Well, if it’s a matter of choice, then I get to make my own choice: I choose that it’s none of my business.

    If two grownups can’t be allowed to work their way out of a little kerfuffel like this without trying to drag me into it, then I think we’re doomed.

    The school principal? Doesn’t he have something more important to worry about than this?

    The graduate? Doesn’t he have something more important to worry about than this?

    A trained Marine thinks that wearing a cap and gown for 5 minutes is some kind of insult?

    A school administrator thinks that the garb seen on a 30-second diploma walk threatens order in his school?

    The parents of this kid think that their wishes are important enough to overshadow a class graduation with a pissing contest?

    God forbid that anyone would fail to step up to the plate and let themselves be manipulated into taking sides!

    Adults. Kerfuffel. Leave them alone.

  9. 9.

    John Cole

    June 13, 2005 at 9:09 pm

    I am not up on my AR 670-1, but I don’t know if you are allowed to wear anything non-military over your Dress A’s. And I don’t know how it works for Marines.

  10. 10.

    Joey

    June 13, 2005 at 10:08 pm

    There are certainly other more pressing issues out there, to be sure, but since nobody cares about it, why not just let him wear the dress uniform? When I graduated, everybody was hot as hell. And he will be just as hot if not more so in his dress outfit. As long as he is as miserable as everybody else, I have no problem with it.

  11. 11.

    Kimmitt

    June 13, 2005 at 10:10 pm

    If you had any idea how litigious some parents are…

  12. 12.

    Lis Riba

    June 14, 2005 at 6:28 am

    When you graduate you wear a gown. Its tradition
    Actually, the gown is a uniform. It’s the uniform of graduation. And one can’t wear two uniforms at once.

    Somebody can wear his militaruniform under the uniform of a graduation, but it really isn’t appropriate to substitute one for the other. You wouldn’t wear a graduation robe into combat, why wear the military uniform for graduation?

  13. 13.

    p.lukasiak

    June 14, 2005 at 8:05 am

    The issue here isn’t the military uniform, its the fact that if this student is permitted the right to choose what he will wear to graduation in order to make some kind of statement about his values, every student at the school will have to be afforded the same privilege/right….

    By insisting that all students wear the same “costume” for graduation, the school administrators ensure the seriousness of the graduation ceremony. Do you really want a high school drag-queen demanding his right to graduate dressed as Carmen Miranda?

  14. 14.

    caleb

    June 14, 2005 at 8:07 am

    Zero tolerence makes zero sense.

    But, this is what happens in a society that makes “The Slippery Slope” it’s arguement winning trump card.

    If you let one do it, what’s to stop the next kid from wanting to wear what he wants?

    Me….could care less. Hell, I hated my HS graduation….just give me the paper and get it over with.

    Anyway….at least someone has some sense here….
    “The high school graduation is the high school’s graduation,” said Gunnery Sgt. Shane Maria, head of the Santa Rosa Marine recruiting station. “It’s not our event. If the appropriate attire for the event is a cap and gown, then he’ll be wearing a cap and gown.”

  15. 15.

    jack

    June 14, 2005 at 1:48 pm

    I can’t help but wonder what sort of Marine starts his military career by disobeying orders?

    If it is school policy that all graduating seniors wear the cap and gown then that’s it. Any Marine worth his salt who’s a graduating senior would be putting on that cap and gown without a peep.

  16. 16.

    belle waring

    June 15, 2005 at 6:10 am

    while I see a certain logic to the argument that Marines should be unusually deferential to authority, as a doctrinaire feminist (and thus a humorless, America-hating scold), I gotta say, let the kid wear his damn uniform. just make an exception for US military uniforms–was that so hard? respect, people.

  17. 17.

    AWJ

    June 15, 2005 at 9:51 am

    The idea that soldiers, as a class, should be deferred to to the extent of being exempt from any rules of society they don’t feel like obeying, strikes me as very unrepublican and, well, creepy. Just saying.

    (Yes, I’m fully aware that soldiers do live under different rules than the rest of us–military law and all that. I’m only talking about common rules of society that have nothing to do with a soldier’s duties–like wearing the appropriate costume to a formal event.)

    (And I’ve recently been reading about Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany, so I’m probably overreacting.)

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