Thursday, Oct. 23, 2003 | 10:58 a.m.
Marvin Sedway Middle School Principal Evans Rutledge suspended 15 students earlier this week for ignoring his ban on wearing clothing that he considered gang-related.
When some 60 students, both boys and girls, showed up last Friday wearing white T-shirts and blue pants, they were handed alternate shirts in a variety of colors. At the end of classes the school returned the students' shirts, Rutledge said.
"Sixty students don't just show up wearing blue that day; they planned this," Rutledge said.
Rutledge went that morning to a local discount store and bought about 80 T-shirts in a variety of colors for $1 each.
"The school has them on hand for students who wear gang-related T-shirts," Rutledge said. "We're not saying the kids are in a gang, but if they wear a gang-related color, it's divisive to other students and sends the wrong message."
The principal said the school did not have time to notify parents about the policy to trade shirts for the day. If a student objected to the replacement shirt, he or she could opt to wear physical education attire, he said.
The students' alleged color coordination may have been a response to a previous fight, Darnell Couthern, spokesman for the Clark County School District Police, said.
He said the campus safety officer assigned to Sedway reported a fight between students Thursday.
"There was a fight between a black student and a Hispanic kid," Couthern said. "The next day all the Hispanic kids wanted to rally around each other and wear the same thing."
Rutledge said he explained to the students why their matching attire was not allowed and told them to not do it again.
When some of the same students came to school Monday wearing blue shirts and pants, they were advised they could be suspended, Rutledge said. Others who had not worn the white-blue combination on Friday were not warned of suspension.
The school asked parents of students involved in the incidents to attend one of a series of conferences this week. The next one is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Friday.
If parents and students cooperated, Rutledge said, the incident was expunged from their records. Those who refused were suspended.
Clark County School District regulations allow principals to ban specific items of clothing or fads that could be viewed as gang-related or distracting from the learning process.
"We want a safe school environment where students are not harassed or intimidated," Rutledge said this morning.
The school is located in the 3400 block of Engelstad Street in North Las Vegas, between Commerce and Revere streets.
Other schools in the district have had similar crackdowns on gang-related attire as well as violations to the existing dress code. At Centennial and Cimarron-Memorial high schools, principals have banned students from wearing items bearing the image of an iron cross, a World War I German military symbol sometimes used by white supremacy groups but also popular as the symbol of skateboarding and motorcycle companies.
The incident at Sedway was a dress code violation and therefore left up to the school administrators to handle, Couthern said.
The school district police are in the midst of an aggressive anti-gang campaign focused largely on the middle schools. A federal grant has helped the district add school safety officers to more campuses.
"With the number of new middle schools opening up, you have different groups joining on campus that didn't have dealings with each other before," Couthern said. "Our goal is to focus on prevention before apprehension, which means we have to show kids how to handle those differences and get along."
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