Blue jeans were verboten in my grade school; of course it was a private school so my parents paid good money to strip me off my rights.

But I went to a public high school and boys couldn't wear shorts, but girls could!  And girls could (and did) wear those incredibly distracting half shirts.  How's that for weird?

That's a wrong assumption - he was doing his job as administrator to keep a group of bullies from provoking other students.

Not offending, provoking.

I know that bitching about people being "offended" is a popular past-time - but you have to understand the difference between "offend" and other kinds of reactions.

Like - for example - I'm not "offended" by this debate, I'm disgusted. I'm annoyed. But I'm not offended. I don't find it offensive. I find it pathetic that people are trying SO hard to avoid the point and misuse terms to fit their own agendas. But not offended.

Now - let's say you show up with a t-shirt with a giant cock on it. If it wasn't on the list, would the school be wrong to ask you to remove it?

*Thats assuming they were doing nothing else.
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See, now I know Victor not really serious about his stand here - that he's just having a laugh.

I just explained, in greater detail than I should have to when chatting with adults, how there was no "offended" in this situation, and he relpies asking why they were offended.

Pretty clever, Victor - for a second there I was really thinking you were taking this seriously, and I was all "Wow! That guy out-anti-establishments even me! Que cojones, hombre!" But as much as your faux stand on the issue impressed me, your sly "Ha ha, I was kidding all along" is even more impressive.

Touche, sir!

To answer Victor's question - "why would the American Flag in America offend anyone?", by which I can assume he means out side of this isolated incident where no one was offended, I will answer by saying:

Well, let's start with the Native Americans - oh, don't worry, we'll get to our black brothers, whose culture, history and languages were stolen from them as they are the decendants of chattle slavery.

And I'd go on from there.

Mike O'B,

You're looking for a specific quote from Assistant Principal Miquel Rodriquez, and unfortuantely he has chosen not to talk to the media.

It has been reported from the students who witnessed the incident that that Rodriquez deemed the US flag shirts "incendery" and he felt that other students could by "offended" by them. However, these words have been put in Mr. Rodriquez's mouth by others. We do not have a first-hand quote, and must rely on the accuracy of those reporting.

But consider:

• More than 100 children at the school where wearing Mexican colours, for the most part clothes and even face paint. A handful of students wore US colours.
• Of the four students sent home for wearing US colours, two are Latino.
• Students who engaged in a protest march on May 6 said they wanted "people to know they're proud of their (Mexican) heritage and they believe wearing red, white and blue on Cinco de Mayo is disrespectful".

Mike, you don't like the word offended, but when someone says they consider an action is disrepectful. they appear to be taking offense.

Is it disrespectful or incendary to wear American colours on Cinco de Mayo, in a school that is 40 percent hispanic? I can only hope that there is a piece of the story that's missing, some act of behaviour past or present by those students that gave rise to a concern that things could become incendary.

(Footnote: I've always thought it was Cinqo de Mayo, but in searching for the newspapers I see it's more often spelled Cinco. I hope either is an acceptable spelling, but if Cinqo is wrong, sorry for using an incorrect spelling the last few posts.)

Jodi,

Try as hard as I might, despite a decade and a half in this country I still write cheque and colour, labour, harbour et al. For work documents, I let the spell-checker edit them out. For personal correspondence, I indulge myself.

And as for the rightness or wrongness of a particular spelling, I submit that the American spellings for labor, color and harbor are just very self-centered. After all, none of them include "u"!

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Cinco de Mayo is literally 5th of May. If you drop the "o", you can claim you were speaking French. Le Cinq Mai!