High School Yearbook Photo

Meet Mr. Patrick Agin -- a Portsmouth Rhode Island high-school senior. Here is the photo he wants to use in his Yearbook: Not so fast says the high-school. From the East Bay RI website:

PHS aims to disarm sword-wielding senior
Patrick Agin's portrait is welcome in the Portsmouth High School yearbook, school officials say, but that medieval broadsword over his shoulder has got to go. With yearbook photo deadline looming, Mr. Agin has not decided yet whether he'll consent to being disarmed, but the choice he says he has been offered is clear: Allow the school to crop the sword from his senior shot, provide a new picture, or go without a yearbook photo altogether. He likes none of the above.

Principal Robert Littlefield declined to discuss the particulars of Mr. Agin's case, saying confidentiality concerns prevent him from talking about individual students.

But "hypothetically speaking," the principal said he does not believe students should appear in the yearbook armed � with swords or weapons of any kind.

The photo in question shows Mr. Agin wearing a chain mail coat and holding that sword over his shoulder. From his belt hang a drinking mug and what appears to be a second smaller sword.

The picture has nothing to do with weapons or school safety and everything to do with one of his favorite pastimes, says his mother, Heather Farrington.

"One of Patrick's extracurricular activities has been participation with his family in the SCA, the Society for Creative Anachronism." That international society, with many thousands of members, "promotes research and reenactment of the medieval period, the years 400-1600 in the then known world," Ms. Farrington said.

"To reflect his passion about re-enactment and his participation with the SCA, Patrick chose to sit for his senior picture in costume, specifically chain mail and a sword."

And this from BoingBoing:

Chain-mail-and-sword kid fights for right to appear in yearbook
A high-school student in Portsmouth, RI is fighting tooth and nail with his high-school administration for the right to dress in chain mail and hold a sword in his yearbook photo. The school has resorted to dirty tricks to keep him out of the yearbook -- including manufacturing fake photo deadlines -- and the student has attracted the assistance of the ACLU in fighting for his right to display his inner geek.

More seriously, the issue is that the principal is interpreting the school's zero-tolerance weapons policy as including a prohibition on holding a prop sword in a yearbook pic. The ACLU is interested in the case as an investigation of the harmful effects that zero-tolerance policies have on free expression.

First, school officials have admitted that last Monday was not the deadline for submitting yearbook photos. The deadline for publishing the yearbook is actually February 28, two months from now. In light of this new deadline, the ACLU has agreed to withdraw its motion for a temporary restraining order prohibiting the school from printing the yearbook without Agin's picture.

Heh... Mr. Agin is getting a better education than the High School principal ever realizes.