A student at Lynn English High School (pictured) in Massachusetts has sparked a dress code debate with a T-shirt reading “All the Cool Girls Are Lesbians,” Lynn’s Daily Item newspaper reports.
The student, who was not identified by the paper, was reprimanded by her vice principal, and told to cover up her shirt and not wear it again. She wrote a letter to the Lynn School Committee, read at Thursday’s meeting, that said she was offended by her treatment. The shirt was simply expressing her opinion, she said.
Lynn mayor and School Committee chairman Judith Flanagan Kennedy agreed with the student’s objections. “I did some legal research on this and I believe she is right,” Kennedy said. “I don’t believe the school had the authority to ask her to cover it up.” The dress code, she said, forbids clothing depicting weapons, drugs, or alcohol, but it does not address issues of gender or sexual orientation. And the school has a gay-straight alliance, she noted.
Lynn English principal Thomas Strangie, however, told the paper that a student can be made to cover up a shirt that could be disruptive, as this student’s shirt could have been.
After some discussion of whether such matters should be handled by building administrators or the school district’s central office, the committee voted “to conduct sensitivity training and hold a refresher course on the laws regarding the student expression for all secondary administrators and staff,” the Item reports.
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