Word: redwoods
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...Rastafarians smoke.' ZAHRA REDWOOD, the first Rastafarian Miss Jamaica and contestant in the Miss Universe pageant, scheduled for May 28, saying she wanted to undo the common stereotypes surrounding her faith, in which smoking marijuana is considered a sacred rite...
Scott, an impish brunet with a tiny nostril stud, had violated Redwood's dress code. The code aimed to squelch gangs by requiring students to wear only certain clothes and solid colors. Scott could change her outfit and stay at school, or she could spend the day at home. "I said, 'There's nothing wrong with what I'm wearing. I'm going home,'" recalls Scott, a near straight-A student. "I thought it was kind of ridiculous...
...parents thought the dress code more than just ridiculous: they considered it unconstitutional. In March they and a dozen other Redwood parents and students sued the school and the Napa Valley Unified School District in state court. They claim the students have a fundamental right to express themselves through their attire--to speak, in effect, through the kind of clothes that Scott insisted on wearing that first day of school: a denim skirt and socks depicting Tigger, a character from Winnie-the-Pooh...
...Napa Valley evokes images of wine and elegant living, but during the mid-1990s gangs roamed local high schools and recruited younger members from places like Redwood Middle School. School officials barred suspected troublemakers from wearing certain colors and flashing signs associated with gangs, and violence dropped. Encouraged, the officials got together with parents to create a schoolwide dress code in 1998: no jeans, no pins, no patterns, no reds and no logos of professional sports teams. "Has it worked? Yes," declares Redwood principal Michael Pearson. "Now there is safety on campus. We're on to something here...
...some parents feel Redwood has gone too far. Donnell Scott, T.K.'s mom, sits with three other mothers at the kitchen table of her modest ranch-style house five blocks from the school. Their kids have all been "dress-coded"--punished for wearing an American Cancer Society pin or a T shirt with JESUS FREAK written on it--and, after three years fighting the policy, they're fed up. Free speech is one issue ("What a kid wears says, This is what I'm into," Scott explains), but the dispute also seems to be about control...