A BAN on a New Jersey schoolboy wearing flowery skirts to school has been overturned after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) claimed his rights were being violated.
At first, Michael Coviello only wanted to bend the uniform code at Hasbrouck Heights High School by donning shorts, which he had started wearing because of a knee injury.
But he was told that district policy prohibited shorts in winter.
He sought a meeting with Joseph Luongo, the school superintendent, and argued that it was unfair that girls were allowed to expose their legs and he was not. The superintendent suggested that if he felt that way, he should dress like a girl. Michael, 17, a drummer in the school band and a member of the golf team, called his bluff and went shopping.
He went to the mall and bought three skirts adorned with flowers and started wearing them to school. On the third day, the principal, Peter O’Hare told him that his clothing was disruptive and that he could be sent home.
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Unlike those fighting to keep their headscarves on at school in France or Shabina Begum, the 16-year-old British girl who won a High Court battle to keep on her head-to-toe jilbab, Michael’s mother decided that she wanted to help her son expose more — not less — of his body. She contacted the ACLU, which usually devotes its energy to fighting the Bush Administration on wiretaps and imprisonment without trial of terrorist suspects in Guantanamo Bay. She said: “If Michael wants to protest not being allowed to wear shorts, then he should have that right,” she said. “And now he shouldn’t be told not to wear skirts.”
Last week, the Coviellos, an ACLU representative and school administrators crafted a compromise: Michael is still not allowed to wear shorts, but he can wear a skirt.
“This is the right outcome,” Jeanne LoCicero, an ACLU lawyer, said in a written statement which hit out at a “senseless, discriminatory school policy”.
Glenn Ruroede, the vicepresident of the school board, said that he was not surprised by the student’s protest.
“Kids want to challenge the code,” he said. “You still get kids every day challenging the right to wear baseball caps.”
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Michael now chooses from among his three skirts and a kilt as his daily outfit. He wears them with T-shirts featuring heavy-metal bands, such as Metallica or Slipknot, or funny sayings, he said.
His is not the only case of its kind. Nathan Warmack, a student at Jackson High School in Missouri, was barred from a school dance because he was wearing a kilt. The actions prompted outrage among the the many Americans who claim Scottish descent and an internet petition was signed by more than 10,000 supporters. Nathan has now received an apology from school officials.