Why is the flag banned in school class pictures?

hoosier · #1 10-20-2004, 04:37 PM

I've heard Newt on the radio twice this week talking about a school in Santa Rosa, CA, which would not allow an American flag in the class picture.

Some of the beloved members of the teachers union snatched flags that the kids had brought.

AlphaSigOU · #2 10-20-2004, 04:44 PM

Goddamned communists!

"I can no longer sit back and allow... Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy... to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids!" -- Gen. Jack D. Ripper, from Dr. Strangelove: Or How I learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb.

DeltAlum · #3 10-20-2004, 04:51 PM

Gee, to listen to you guys, you'd think there's a commie behind every Bush...

Oooops...

I mean Rock.

Rudey · #4 10-20-2004, 04:52 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by DeltAlum
Gee, to listen to you guys, you'd think there's a commie behind every Bush...

Oooops...

I mean Rock.

I don't get it.

-Rudey

Optimist Prime · #5 10-20-2004, 05:05 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Rudey
I don't get it.

-Rudey

Its like that movie with Frank Sinatra and Denzel Washington. I bet someone gets shot sometime soon.

IowaStatePhiPsi · #6 10-20-2004, 05:08 PM

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/...in648931.shtml

Senior in New Hampshire is told he can't use his chosen senior picture for the yearbook because he has a shotgun.

Quote:

Yearbook Photo Sparks Gun Flap
LONDONDERRY, N.H., Oct. 13, 2004

(AP) The school board has voted to ban a photo of a student from the senior section of his high school yearbook because he is posed with a shotgun.

But Tuesday's unanimous vote also backed a compromise: Blake Douglass can have the photo published in a "community sports" section, and a new photo - without the gun but featuring other elements of skeet and trap shooting - can appear in the seniors' section of the Londonderry High School yearbook.

The compromise wasn't good enough for Douglass, who wanted his senior photo in traditional sportsman's pose, wearing an oxford shirt, navy vest and holding the shotgun over his shoulder.

"I don't see anything wrong with the picture," Douglass, 17 said at the hearing. "I just want my senior picture in the yearbook."

Last month the yearbook staff, adviser, principal and superintendent chose to bar the photo from the yearbook, saying the firearm was inappropriate.

Penny Dean, Douglass' lawyer, said she intends to file a complaint in U.S. District Court, and said the National Rifle Association will pay for the court case.

Dean cited a statement on student publications in the board's policy manual: "We encourage the use of school sponsored publications to express students' points of view. They shall be free from all policy restrictions outside the normal rules for responsible journalism."

You can say anything you want, as long as it's what we tell you to say.

cash78mere · #7 10-20-2004, 06:00 PM

i don't know anything about the flag thing. i'd be interested to learn why they can't have flags.

but with regards to the gun...you gotta be kidding. with all that is going on with school violence like columbine, and they're going to have a kid pose with a gun? no way. i don't care how innocent the picture it. it sets a precedent. how can you say no if you've said yes once in the past? you can't. you have to stop it before it starts.

Pike1483 · #8 10-20-2004, 06:49 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by cash78mere
i don't know anything about the flag thing. i'd be interested to learn why they can't have flags.

but with regards to the gun...you gotta be kidding. with all that is going on with school violence like columbine, and they're going to have a kid pose with a gun? no way. i don't care how innocent the picture it. it sets a precedent. how can you say no if you've said yes once in the past? you can't. you have to stop it before it starts.

What precedent does this set? It's not like he's got an assault rifle and dressed in a black trenchcoat, he just got his senior picture that shows one of his hobbies.

It's called the second ammendment-- get used to it.

Rudey · #9 10-20-2004, 06:59 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by cash78mere
i don't know anything about the flag thing. i'd be interested to learn why they can't have flags.

but with regards to the gun...you gotta be kidding. with all that is going on with school violence like columbine, and they're going to have a kid pose with a gun? no way. i don't care how innocent the picture it. it sets a precedent. how can you say no if you've said yes once in the past? you can't. you have to stop it before it starts.

So people who have pictures posing with guns escalates to students shooting everyone up in a building?

-Rudey
--Right

PhiPsiRuss · #10 10-20-2004, 07:13 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Rudey
So people who have pictures posing with guns escalates to students shooting everyone up in a building?

Yes. And hair dryers should also be banned because they look like guns.

KillarneyRose · #11 10-20-2004, 07:43 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by PhiPsiRuss
Yes. And hair dryers should also be banned because they look like guns.

well, that, and they can lead to really big hair

ISUKappa · #12 10-20-2004, 07:46 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by IowaStatePhiPsi
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/...in648931.shtml

Senior in New Hampshire is told he can't use his chosen senior picture for the yearbook because he has a shotgun.

Well, shoot. That would have knocked out about 1/4 of the senior pictures in my hs graduating class.

hoosier · #13 10-20-2004, 08:32 PM

Gingrich backs Calif. teens in flag flap

Santa Rosa, CA, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- California teens defying a high school's ban on flags in class photos got a boost from Newt Gingrich, the Santa Rosa (Calif.) Press Democrat said Monday.

Gingrich, the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, met with 10 seniors from Sonoma Valley High School, where two students have been suspended after refusing to surrender American flags during the class photo session. A third faces the same fate.

"It's such an amazing story and so out of sync with what's going on in the rest of the country," Gingrich said during a 30-minute meeting.

The students said officials told them the class picture wouldn't be sold, and none would be taken next year.

"Anti-flag control. That's fairly Looney Tunes," Gingrich said. "In the middle of a war the idea that you'd say 'no' to students about the American flag is strange, to say the least."

School Superintendent Kim Jamieson denies the students' allegation that the ban on flags was imposed in response to the appearance of a Mexican flag in last year's senior photo. He said the school simply wanted a photo without props after four years of students displaying flags.

honeychile · #14 10-20-2004, 08:45 PM

Isn't there some statute somewhere that you must have an American flag at a public meeting of any sort? At least, that's what I was told when I asked why we have an American flag at church.

As for the student with the gun, if he was wearing fatigues & holding an AK-47 in a firing stance, I'd have more troubles with it. This is a country kid, and he shoots skeet. He's using proper shotgun etiquette (the rifle is such that it can't fire & is pointed towards the ground). This is hardly comparable to Columbine.

33girl · #15 10-20-2004, 10:29 PM

I don't understand the whole concept of posing with ANYTHING, be it your gun, your pompoms or your saxophone...I would think it would make the yearbook look really busy and crowded unless they crop the pics to just show everyone's face. We could get pics done elsewhere but the one in the yearbook had to be a traditional shot by the official photographer.