You've Got to be Kidding Me!!!!

I honestly had no intention of writing a post tonight, but while scrolling through Yahoo’s news site before I shut the computer down to knit I stumbled across this article and had to write. I think it is crazy that a school would suspend a student, much less one that has survived cancer over hair!!! No they didn’t suspend him for lack of hair, but over the fact that as a male student his hair doesn’t meet their pretty strict code for how hair “must look”.

J.T. Gaskins is a student at Madison Academy in Burton, Michigan and was diagnosed with leukemia when he was one year old. He is growing out his hair to donate to the Locks of Love charity, which is a widely known charity that takes donated lengths of hair and turns them into wigs for cancer patients. They have requirements listed on their website as to the needed length (10” of hair) and listing some of the regulations such as the percentage of the hair that can be bleached and other needed factors. J.T. decided to grow out his hair for donation after learning a sister of a family friend was facing cancer. If nothing else these factors lead me to believe his school is being too rigid with their suspension of him for wanting to support a fellow cancer fighter. It also makes me wonder if heaven forbid he were to relapse for one reason or another if the school would suspend him should he lose all of his hair due to his cancer treatments?

I also find it interesting to read in the article that his school says “Gaskins’ suspension has more to do with the unkempt style of his hair, rather than its length.” They follow with the handbook statement that “boys’ hair be, ‘clean, neat, free of unnatural or distracting colors, off the collar, off the ears and out of the eyes’”. My question to that is, if the length is not the problem, what solution do they offer to allow him to grow his hair to the needed 10 inch length and stay in compliance with their code?  Maybe I’m not seeing something here, but I cannot see any male appropriate methods of hair containment that will both allow him to grow his hair out for the charitable cause and comply with the school’s code.

I do believe that students need to have a healthy respect for both rules and authority, but there also needs to be some flexibility by those in authority to allow the kids to give back to their community if they are so inclined. Whether that be a program as described in the article involving a promissory note and research into the organization or some other method of deciding what the exception should be could be left up to individual states or school district. Honestly in the end the final decision of how each student’s hair should look should fall to his or her parents.  I think it is beyond the scope of what the district can actually be expected or allowed to regulate.