That's a really nice photo. My daughter graduated last year and the "professional" school photographer asked her to give him the sexy look she'd give her boyfriend if she wanted him to kiss her. She just started laughing. What a world!
Posted on 11/02/2009 9:37:19 AM PST by OCCASparky
At Merrimack Valley High, the yearbook policy prohibits photos like the one Jordan Westgate submitted. He's wearing his army combat hat, and he's standing in front of the American flag. What's the problem? asks Jordan, a senior who completed the Army's basic training last summer.
He's showing no disrespect. No disrespect at all. No hats and no props? Well, okay, for the most part. But shouldn't exceptions be made, especially these days, when we're fighting two wars simultaneously?
In fact Westgate, who will become a full-time soldier after graduation, believes he's showing more respect than anyone else in his class.
Where's the beef?
"I think it's disrespectful to disassemble the uniform," says Westgate, sitting in his kitchen with his mom, Dee, nearby. "It's disrespectful to the men and women who have fought and died before me."
Jordan and Dee want the issue in the open. They feel passionate about their cause. The MV administration, meanwhile, has dug in and stuck to the letter of its law. The rule debuted four years ago, after students began submitting their own digitally snapped photos, often casual, posed, full-length and, the administration believed, inappropriate for the formal flavor sought in the student's portrait section.
Therein lies the seeds of our feud. It's lasted the better part of two months. Jordan will have his yearbook photo taken by a fellow student and her digital camera, but the residual effects linger with the family.
It certainly didn't help when Dee, anticipating a fight and searching for ammunition, found a picture of a Muslim girl who covered her head with a traditional scarf in the 2007 yearbook's junior class section.
(Excerpt) Read more at concordmonitor.com ...
NH ping! FReepmail me if you want on or off of this list.
The comments on this are very interesting. Here’s a direct link. http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091031/FRONTPAGE/910310306
Political correctness trumps everything.
Liberalism trumps everything.
NO, whats wrong with everyone playing by the same rules.
My position is no exception to either, kids are not bill boards..
Thanks for the ping. I believe that kid is a nephew of my hospital roommate. I’ve got to give him a call.
“kids are not bill boards”
Better take a little walk around the block and check things out there scooter. Plenty of teenage “billboards” out there. Military uniforms, BTW, are not billboards!
Sought by whom? Apparently not a lot of the students. Personally, while I think it's sort of nice to include a formal portrait of graduates in a yearbook, it's hardly reasonable (or constitutional) for a government-operated school to require this.
And honestly, if you look back at yearbooks from 50, 60, 70 years ago when "formal portraits" reigned, a lot of the portraits were pretty silly-looking. Especially the girls/women, who were often posed in an utterly unnatural way, with the back of one hand tucked under the chin with fingers sticking out "gracefully" (often looked more like "spastically"), and a facial expression which involved dreamily staring off into space towards some invisible target which was definitely not the camera lens.
These are the same "teachers" who have replaced the study of American history with victimology lessons and who even teach science with a relativistic slant. My daughter's homework on "weather" precipitated more than a little concern; it sometimes looked like an Algore Production. I've taught her well though; last year she had to be dissuaded (by her mom) from telling her teacher that she'd lost her Global Warming homework during a snowstorm.
Look at what they've done to the holidays. Columbus Day now seems to be a Day of Repentance for the Massacred Indigenous American Peoples. Likewise, Thanksgiving has been flipped the bird by the Legion of the Terminally Sensitive. I've heard that some school cafeterias refuse to serve turkey because certain students might be... you..know..what. The "O" word. Mustn't ever "O" anybody.
Parenthetically, do you remember the turkey they used to serve in school when we were kids? It was sort of a pressed turkey loaf, the gravy was lumpy, and the cranberry sauce jiggled like Pam Anderson on a trampoline, but at least they made the effort.
Now, only non-American holidays seem to be welcome. Ramadan and Eid-al-Fitr are "in". Flag Day, Veterans Day and Christmas... no longer exist.
Oh well, judging from the teacher's parking lot at the middle school just across the way here in Concord, most of their Priuses still bear Obama bumper stickers; green oval NPR stickers also seem to be mandatory, and why am I not surprised?
what’s a “combat Hat”?
does the army actually call their BDU cap a “combat hat”?
doesn’t any paper employ an editor anymore?
Look, slick, I’m a vet myself. And what joe kid wears on the street has nothing to do with his school pictures. But if you want to have pictures of cross dressers and G strings in a school book have at it.
doesn’t any paper employ an editor anymore?
Yes, but today they are called “Political Content
Revisors”.
The current term for the type of cap he is wearing is the “PC” or “Patrol Cap”....the dress cover is the Beret..
AH Yes! Those were really the good old days!
I used to even carry a shotgun in the back of the van to school so I could go hunting right after. My Biology teacher was one of my hunting partners along with some other students.
Yeah, but it’s that kind of mentality which leads to the idiotic “zero tolerance” policies we hear about and hate so much.
Greens look much better than the ACUs anyway.
He should have put a flag, from the story I’m sure his family has one, on a pole, dressed in his Greens - without the hat - and had one of his friends shoot a similar picture as his basic training picture.
I’m sure it would be a much better picture and I’ll bet he’d be one of the few with a tie.
Good thing he didn’t go to Jump School and try and use that picture. :-)
I truly do miss the days before the Great Infantilization of America began to take hold, intent on shaking every last ounce of courage and initiative out of us.
ACU not BDU uniform.
Don’t have an ACU hat around but my old tri color desert bonnie hat is listed as “Hat, Camouflage Pattern, Desert DLA 100-90-D-0586”
ED
If he’s completed boot camp, take the picture in your uniform. That’ll be more attention getting than the flag and just the hat.
This is the standard basic combat training photograph everybody gets. I’d be curious to know how many school committee members, and school faculty are aware that this is the case. I know that in my town very few would be. In a small New England Town though, this should be the type of thing that should be easily put on the ballot.
Boy's Mom:
"We feel we're being discriminated against for being in the military," Dee said. "She had to wear something as part of her religion. What's the difference?"...
Mike Jette, Merrimack Valley HS principal:
...But he says religion and the controversy surrounding Jordan are, indeed, different. The Muslim student had no choice; Jordan did.
"I think there's a difference with religion," Jette said. "If a Jewish student came here and said he had to wear a yarmulke (for the portrait photograph), we'd have to look at that."
Apparently, Jette thinks that religion is no longer a matter of individual choice in the state of New Hampshire.
F-a-s-c-i-n-a-t-i-n-g.
Maybe I misunderstood your point of view. I think the kid should be able to wear his uniform in the picture. I DO NOT think cross dressers and g-strings should be allowed. We have to come to a point where common sense can rule and pride in the USA is the norm and not the exception. I think rules can be written that would exclude inappropriate dress ,ie-thongs and boys in dresses, but still allow military uniforms, boy scout uniforms and the like to be worn, photographed and published in the yearbook.
Sorry about the “scooter” thing, I was a bit riled up by the whole story.
Useless journalist.
Interesting. I think this whole problem would be a avoided with an ‘offical military photo’ exemption. I also believe that many school administrators and school committee members would probably be opposed to this, because of an intrinsic distaste for the military, in my opinion.
I always thought senior portraits were done in tuxedos for guys.
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