Straight A Student Suspended for Long Hair

At least four Kerens High School students were suspended Tuesday for three days after ignoring a mandate to cut their hair upon returning to school after Christmas break, according to one of the youths. Matthew Lopez-Widish said that after he and three other long-haired friends entered school Tuesday morning, the principal and assistant principal were waiting and called the students into their office.

[Glenn]

Good for the Principal, If they don't obey this rule the next time it will be something worse

[McLovin]

who cares if the kids are making good grades,Leave them alone!
They're hair has obviously been long for several years!
Why are they picking on them now?

[Right Wing Always Right]

Filthy hippie needs to get a haircut

[My Name]

Why do the principals focus on the kids with the long hair and not the kids in school who are selling the drugs or bullying others when they have their heads turned? An issue that clearly needs to be looked into.

[james]

git a haircut...git a job...take a bath...damdirtyhippies...

[TexasRealist]

McLovin wrote:

who cares if the kids are making good grades,Leave them alone!
They're hair has obviously been long for several years!
Why are they picking on them now?

What is the required GPA for the privilege of disobeying the rules?

[Devout]

Boys should not have long hair, it is an abomination.

[Devout]

My Name wrote:

Why do the principals focus on the kids with the long hair and not the kids in school who are selling the drugs or bullying others when they have their heads turned? An issue that clearly needs to be looked into.

The long haireds are usually the ones selling the drugs.

[some guy]

the kids now a days are garbage. they are self absorbed, closeminded, egotistical, entitled, self centered, ungrateful. not necessarily lazy, but greedy. most likely that straight a student didn't study hard. just worked the system for his own ambition. i don't want kids. and i hope most others will thing the same before they have one.

[TexasRealist]

some guy wrote:

the kids now a days are garbage. they are self absorbed, closeminded, egotistical, entitled, self centered, ungrateful. not necessarily lazy, but greedy. most likely that straight a student didn't study hard. just worked the system for his own ambition. i don't want kids. and i hope most others will thing the same before they have one.

I'm already there, bub. I used to want kids. Then I took a look around. Heeeeeeell no. Not anymore.

[Les Claypool]

Is this a military school? It sounds like Mr. Taylor is living in the 1950's. Can someone here please tell me what the hell a person's hair length has to do with education?

[TexasRealist]

Les Claypool wrote:

Is this a military school? It sounds like Mr. Taylor is living in the 1950's. Can someone here please tell me what the hell a person's hair length has to do with education?

It suggests he has no ability to follow the rules. It doesn't matter what it has to do with education. The school board has decided what rules are to be followed at school. If he were trying to get a job and the business had a dress code, no one would cry about him not being hired for not obeying the dress code.

When did people get this notion that they could do whatever they liked at school and face no consequences? If school is supposed to prepare them for the 'real world' then I have news....in the 'real world' you have rules to follow. They don't always make sense and you may not like them, but they are followed or you don't get a job.

[Les Claypool]

TexasRealist wrote:

<quoted text>
It suggests he has no ability to follow the rules. It doesn't matter what it has to do with education. The school board has decided what rules are to be followed at school. If he were trying to get a job and the business had a dress code, no one would cry about him not being hired for not obeying the dress code.
When did people get this notion that they could do whatever they liked at school and face no consequences? If school is supposed to prepare them for the 'real world' then I have news....in the 'real world' you have rules to follow. They don't always make sense and you may not like them, but they are followed or you don't get a job.

He must be able to follow the rules; he’s making straight A’s.

School has everything to do with scholastic education and getting along with people the same age and nothing else.

I’ll teach my kids about the “real world”. People choose to be educators so they don’t have to cope with the “real world”. If my son chooses to grow his hair long to get the chicks, I’d be proud of him, especially if he’s making straight A’s.

It’s okay to call a stupid rule for what it is, and this one is just plain stupid.

[What]

What ever happened to accepting people as they are so they can learn what to become....

The Kids "LONG HAIR" is expressing their indivuality....they think outside the box and are unique....

Teenagers are rebelious no matter what...they WILL PUSH the button....if you overlook the outside and only consentrate on the outside, the teenager will rebel authority...it has been that way since the world began...

Search deeper...you will be able to see the true person...

Accept a person as they are so they may learn what to become...look to the inner beauty

"Don't judge a book by it's cover"

And many more....

Fire that principal...since he does not know how to relate to people!!!!

[Accepting others]

Wouldn't it be a very..very dull world if everyone were the same.....

That is what is great about America....individualism.....a nd the freemdom to express themselves....

What does long hair have to do with academics?

Einstein was considered a freek...he had long hair!

[Accepting others]

Long-haired teen says trim not likely, despite school's warnings

E. Texas district warned him he risks not graduating if it's not cut

10:48 PM CST on Monday, January 7, 2008
By MATTHEW HAAG / The Dallas Morning News
[e-mail]

KERENS, Texas – Matthew Lopez-Widish hasn't cut his curly brown hair in four years, and he doesn't plan to despite an ultimatum from high school administrators.
KYE R. LEE/DMN

Matthew Lopez-Widish was told by Kerens officials to cut his hair before returning to classes, per the policy that forbids male students from having hair that extends past the collar. A few days before Christmas break at Kerens High School, about 15 miles east of Corsicana in a tiny town known as the birthplace of Big Tex, the straight-A student and at least four other students were called into the principal's office.
Cut your hair by the time you return to school in January or be sent to alternative school, be removed from all extracurricular activities and risk not graduating, Matthew said the principal and assistant principal told him.
Classes in the Kerens district resume today.
"I told them that I'm not going to cut my hair," said Matthew, 18, whose hair, when uncurled, reaches the middle of his back. "It may seem kind of stubborn, but to me, it's part of who I am."
Matthew says that his rights are being stripped and that he's going to take his concerns to the school board meeting Monday.

[TexasRealist]

Les Claypool wrote:

He must be able to follow the rules; he’s making straight A’s.

Clearly he isn't able to follow the rules, since the rules plainly state that his hair is not allowed, yet he has it anyway.

Les Claypool wrote:

I’ll teach my kids about the “real world”. People choose to be educators so they don’t have to cope with the “real world”. If my son chooses to grow his hair long to get the chicks, I’d be proud of him, especially if he’s making straight A’s.
It’s okay to call a stupid rule for what it is, and this one is just plain stupid.

And if you support your son growing his hair out in defiance of the rules, perhaps you should keep the lil cretin at home and home school him so you can be the maker of the rules.

The school has rules. He has broken them. Period.

[Accepting others]

Making his case
"I just want the school board to notice that just because I have long hair doesn't mean I'm going to quit learning or obstructing people from learning," Matthew said.

Matthew Lopez-Widish with Derek Divetta, isn't the only student at Kerens High School who is struggling with the hair policy. Downtown Kerens consists of a three-block strip of red brick road and mostly vacant or dilapidated one-story storefronts. About a mile to the south is the school district's campus, which houses all grade levels.

During school board meetings last fall, parents complained about recurring instances of students disobeying the hair code in the student handbook. Apparently, some long-haired boys were not doing a good enough job keeping their hair from falling below their shirt collar or from covering their ear

The hair policy for male students at Kerens High is straightforward: No hair past the collar, no hair below the eyebrows, hair can't extend ½ inch over the ears, and ponytails can be no longer than a half-inch. The student dress code does not mention hair length for female students.

By December, Superintendent Kevin Stanford came up with a solution to repeated complaints about hair length: All high school males with long hair must get haircuts.

"What happened was that a number of male students would come in with it down, and they would play games and not have it up when they should have," said Mr. Stanford, whose grayish hair is cut close to the scalp. "The students had a chance to follow the rules, and they didn't."

Too many students would be on campus before or after school with their long hair let down in violation of school policy, Mr. Stanford said.
"The problem is that they don't consistently comply with the policy," he said, though he's never seen Matthew disobey the dress code rules.

To meet the dress code standards, Matthew's mom braids his hair and then tucks the braids to shorten them and keep them off his collar. He slicks back his hair on the top to keep it out of his face and from covering his ears. After the five-minute process is over, it's hard to tell that his hair is nearly 2 feet long, Matthew said.

His friend Wesley Bunch, who was also called into the principal's office, puts his much shorter blond hair in a ponytail and wears a headband to keep it out of his face.

Matthew's mom, Linda Lopez, doesn't buy the superintendent's reasoning that students didn't comply. She believes that the school board is against males having long hair, which she says is utterly foolish.

"It's not the '60s anymore. They aren't hippies, and they aren't radical anti-war tree huggers," she said.

[Accepting others]

Schools' right
Jim Walsh, a school law expert in Austin, said that school districts have the legal right to mandate hair and dress codes. Several cases, including one in the 1990s from Bastrop ISD that reached the Texas Supreme Court, have been decided in favor of the school districts.
"The courts generally affirm these standards," Mr. Walsh said.
Some challenges made on the basis of religious discrimination have been successful.
If Matthew is sent to alternative school, he could risk losing his extracurricular activities. His participation in a work program allows him to leave school early to go to his job as a cashier at a Jack in the Box near Corsicana, where he works upward of 30 hours a week.
But more important, Matthew said, he would be removed from One-Act Play, the UIL-sponsored theater contest that begins the first day back from the holiday break.
"That's one thing that I'd hate to lose," said Matthew, who played a villain in a recent community play.
His friend Wesley, is in the same situation. If he doesn't cut his hair, he will be removed from the school's skateboarding team.
But neither is budging.

Wesley and Matthew said the administration can send them to alternative school. And if that happens, Mrs. Lopez said, she'd look into removing her son from the district.

"It's just a kid with long hair," she said. "It doesn't seem like a punishment that he deserves."

[Unbelievable]

TexasRealist wrote:

<quoted text>
Clearly he isn't able to follow the rules, since the rules plainly state that his hair is not allowed, yet he has it anyway.
<quoted text>
And if you support your son growing his hair out in defiance of the rules, perhaps you should keep the lil cretin at home and home school him so you can be the maker of the rules.
The school has rules. He has broken them. Period.

You apparently do not know about the real world and all of the rules that are coming down upon our society....

Check out this next story:

MISSISSIPPI LEGISLATURE

2008 Regular Session

To: Public Health and Human Services; Judiciary B

By: Representative Mayhall, Read, Shows
House Bill 282

AN ACT TO PROHIBIT CERTAIN FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS FROM SERVING FOOD TO ANY PERSON WHO IS OBESE, BASED ON CRITERIA PRESCRIBED BY THE STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH; TO DIRECT THE DEPARTMENT TO PREPARE WRITTEN MATERIALS THAT DESCRIBE AND EXPLAIN THE CRITERIA FOR DETERMINING WHETHER A PERSON IS OBESE AND TO PROVIDE THOSE MATERIALS TO THE FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS; TO DIRECT THE DEPARTMENT TO MONITOR THE FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS FOR COMPLIANCE WITH THE PROVISIONS OF THIS ACT; AND FOR RELATED PURPOSES.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI:

SECTION 1.(1) The provisions of this section shall apply to any food establishment that is required to obtain a permit from the State Department of Health under Section 41-3-15(4)(f), that operates primarily in an enclosed facility and that has five (5) or more seats for customers.

(2) Any food establishment to which this section applies shall not be allowed to serve food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by the State Department of Health after consultation with the Mississippi Council on Obesity Prevention and Management established under Section 41-101-1 or its successor. The State Department of Health shall prepare written materials that describe and explain the criteria for determining whether a person is obese, and shall provide those materials to all food establishments to which this section applies. A food establishment shall be entitled to rely on the criteria for obesity in those written materials when determining whether or not it is allowed to serve food to any person.

(3) The State Department of Health shall monitor the food establishments to which this section applies for compliance with the provisions of this section, and may revoke the permit of any food establishment that repeatedly violates the provisions of this section.

SECTION 2. This act shall take effect and be in force from and after July 1, 2008.

http://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/documents/20 ...

When and where will it end?

This is really scary!!!