Admittedly, I am not a big fan of guys with long hair. I especially abhor long, shaggy bangs that make ordinary boys look like Cousin It.
However, as much as I despise males with long locks, I hate cancer even more.
It’s a reasonable deduction, which I assume many would agree with.
Unfortunately, “many” doesn’t include administrators at a Michigan high school.
Members of the Madison Academy School Board recently suspended a 17-year-old male student for sporting long hair.
Never mind that the teen is a cancer survivor, who was growing out his mane because he wanted to donate it to Locks of Love. The highly reputable organization makes wigs for financially disadvantaged children suffering from long-term medical hair loss from cancer or any other diagnosis.
When J.T. Gaskin was just two months old he was diagnosed with Infant Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. Gaskin endured nearly five years of chemotherapy during his battle with the insidious disease, and has been in remission since he was seven years old.
The teen has his last pediatric cancer check-up later this year, but wanted to give back to Locks of Love before he graduated from high school, so he decided to grow out his hair.
Proving that no good deed goes unpunished, Gaskin was suspended for a week for violating his school’s policy on hair. According to Madison Academy’s dress code, male students can not come to school with hair that passes their ears. Gaskin was told by school administrators that he could return to class if he placed his hair in a ponytail, permed it, or braided it.
Oh. Yes. They. Did.
School bigwigs also suggested that the teen could transfer to another school or simply chop his hair and find another means to donate to Locks of Love.
Since Gaskin’s story went viral, a petition has been posted on Change.org calling for Madison Academy to amend its dress code. So far more than 55,000 signatures have been collected along with thousands of comments, like this one that puts Gaskin’s hair-raising experience in perspective: “Most teens want to do drugs. This teen wants to give back to his community and make a positive difference in someone else’s life. But the adults paid to supervise his education are not smart enough to support that? Exactly who is supervising these kids and where are the schools morals and values?”
What would you do if you were Gaskin’s parents?