BMOC (Big Medievalist On Campus) Told To Sheath Thine Mighty Swift Sword

MayorBob.

Posted to Etcetera on Fri Dec 22, 2006 at 03:57:18 PM EST (promoted by port1080). RSS.

Portsmouth High School in Portsmouth, Rhode Island has a tradition of allowing graduating seniors to submit their own photos for the yearbook.  In years past they've featured photos of members of the band with their instruments or kids on skateboards - anything, really, that let's them better express themselves.  One kid went a bit too far, in the minds of school authorities, and his photo is banned from the yearbook.  What, pray tell, could this kid have submitted a photo of?  It was a picture of him in medieval chain mail holding a (gasp) unsheathed broadsword.  According to the school, they have this zero tolerance rule on weapons in school and this rule extends to the official pictures of seniors in the yearbook, so it's no go.  Needless to say, this has caused quite a stir.

Patrick Agin is the name of the senior and he says he wanted the picture in because "I just really like the picture, and it's one of the first good photos I've taken in a long time."  Not only that, but Patrick is a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, an organization into re-enactments of medieval history.   Too bad, according to school principal Robert Littlefield: "Students wielding weapons is just not consistent with our existing policies or the mission of the school.  I think the picture speaks for itself."  The existing policies of the school regarding weapons can be found beginning on page 36 of the school handbook (50 pg pdf doc) which describes a wide variety of firearms and blunt or sharp instruments which qualify as weapons.  The handbook doesn't specify broad swords and doesn't mention pictures of any of the banned weapons, it just says "school shall enforce a policy of zero tolerance for weapons and violence in school."

"Bureaucratic ridiculousness" is the way Steven Brown, the director of Rhode Island's chapter of the ACLU characterizes the school's position.  The ACLU filed a lawsuit (pdf doc) charging the school with violating Patrick's First Amendment rights.  Both the school and the ACLU have agreed to have the matter heard by the state education commissioner.  According to Brown, schools around the nation can take these zero tolerance policies too far, citing cases of school kids suspended for having butter knives and or toy ray guns in school.  But, this one takes the cake, as far as Brown is concerned, "since Patrick was not even bringing the weapon to school."

Brown and the ACLU have a few questions for the school when they sit down with the education commissioner.  Why are they so concerned about a photo of a student portraying himself as a medieval warrior being in the yearbook when they have a few anomalies in their closet?  Anomaly number one is the school mascot, a Revolutionary War soldier holding a musket.  Littlefield sees this as a "different issue" and asks how "anybody could reasonably construe a cartoon depiction of a soldier from 250 years ago as a threat to our educational environment."  Anomaly number two is that the school already tried to find an alternate way out of this by offering to allow Agin's photo in as long as he took out an ad in the yearbook.  According to Brown, "I guess they think it's a danger to the school system on Page 6, but not on Page 26."  Not so, according to Littlefield who draws a line between the editorial content and the advertising section of the yearbook.  A school official said there were two instances where seniors ran pictures of themselves with weapons in the advertising section - one of them a Civil War re-enactor with his musket.