A 7th grade student Juelz Washington, and his parents have filed a federal lawsuit in court yesterday due to an incident that occurred last April, according to Yahoo news. The incident that transpired occurred in Texas at Pearland Independent School District;
What actually took place was three school officials used a black permanent marker for disciplinary actions from the student. The student’s haircut, did not meet the schools dress code and consequently, the officials felt the need to fill in the students parts with a black sharpie.
The code states,
“hair must be neat, clean and well-groomed; Extreme hairstyle such as carvings, mo-hawks, spikes etc not allowed”
Juelz told reporters, school authorities told him either he could enter in school suspension (ISS), or have the school color in the design part. What took this lawsuit into another twist is that in the lawsuit, it states the teacher, assistant principal and official all laughed while coloring in the design that the black teen had displayed on his haircut.
What’s obvious here is the student is a minority (black), and since his hair color is black, the officials felt the obligation to color in the hair, black as if his hair was a coloring book.
Juelz parents were not notified of the school decision to color in the design, and if they were notified, they would have indeed cut their sons hair themselves.
After the incident took place, the school district released this memo,
“A campus administrator mishandled disciplinary action by giving the student options including notifying his mother, disciplinary consequences or filling in the shape of the hair carving with a marker. This latter practice is not condoned by the district and does not align with appropriate measures for dress code violations.”
The administrator has since then been put on administrative leave pending further investigation.
Flip the page to see the local news piece on the on-going investigation.