By Kai Porter

In our town's schools, the color red is the color we are not supposed to wear. The issue of gangs and violence is still present although some students complain that the existing rules are a nuisance.

It is true that excessive wearing of the color red bears the suggestion of gangs. However some teachers and other faculty are a little overly strict. Wearing only a little bit of red is not a big deal yet students can be told to change their clothes because of this. If, for example, a girl has a shirt with a heart on it (a red heart) this should not be a problem. If she had a red jacket, red shoes and a red bandana, that would be a different story.

A friend of mine was recently stopped by the vice principal and questioned about her red backpack. It should be noted that my friend had nothing else on her that was or suggested the color red. The vice principal said he would get back to her about this. My friend was appalled at the possibility that she may need to by a new backpack just because it was red, especially since she had worn a red backpack since she was in kindergarten and never been confronted like this. So the rule of the color red is not only annoying but causes a money-related inconveniences.

Something else that has been brought up in the past is that a Caucasian student can get away with wearing red or "maroon" more easily than a Hispanic student. This has even been proven by a few girls who performed an experiment by having a Caucasian and a Hispanic girl both wear red to a class. The result went as hypothesized. The Hispanic girl was sent to the office. The Caucasian girl was not. Clearly if the red rule goes for anyone, it should go for everyone. I wonder if it's a coincidence that the girl with the red backpack was Mexican?

Some people are saying that by having these strict rules about the color red it is giving to much power to the gangs. If you think about this, it is kind of true. It's as though we have given them the color. Now we all need to make sure that the hat we are wearing doesn't have a patch of red or our shirt doesn't say something in red, etc.

There have been terrible occurrences in this area in the past that were related to wearing red.   However, most of these cases were the result of wearing more red, like a completely red jacket. If we ban a color completely, don't you think the students that ARE in gangs might simply choose a different color to be the one they wear. Will we ban that color as well?