I Heart Boobies and other distractions to learning.

One of the issues that schools face is the balancing student’s 1^st Amendment rights for free expression and the need to maintain an orderly and safe school – free from sexual harassment. One such balancing act concerns the popular “I heart Boobies” bracelets. “Principals in Florida, California, South Dakota, Colorado and Wisconsin have either banned these bracelets entirely, or forced students to turn them inside-out during school time” according to an online article
http://www.care2.com/causes/schools-banning-i-love-boobies-bracelets.html.

Further quoting from the article “Not surprisingly, Shaney Jo Darden, founder and executive director of Keep A Breast Foundation, the California-based not-for-profit group that created the $4 wristbands, disagrees. “That’s the whole idea, it’s getting people to talk about breast cancer, it’s getting people to share their feelings about how this disease has impacted their life,” says Darden. “The bracelet is doing what it’s meant to do – it’s making people talk.” The Keep A Breast Foundation says its mission is to “help eradicate breast cancer by exposing young people to methods of prevention, early detection and support.” Its website declares that breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in young women under the age of 40, but that despite these facts, many women mistakenly believe that breast cancer is only a problem for women over 40 years old. Hence, the need to educate. That sounds wonderful to me.”

We have weighed the arguments about the bracelets as school leaders and think that they present a distraction to the educational process. At the risk of appearing insensitive to the Cause, we are asking that our students not wear them to school and will be asking students to remove them beginning next week. We fully support the cause of breast cancer awareness and eradication of this horrid disease. We simply encourage our students to find another means of expressing their opinions rather than wearing “I Heart Boobies” bracelets