Short Memories on School Protests

SAN DIEGO -- What's really at the heart of that story from 2010 where five students at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, Calif., conspired to wear T-shirts bearing the American flag? Was it patriotism? Or petulance?

Given that it happened on May 5 -- "Cinco de Mayo" -- and given that the students had been told by administrators not to wear the shirts but did so anyway, the answer is petulance.

That's how Assistant Principal Miguel Rodriguez saw it. Concerned that the boys' fashion choices might provoke a violent response from Latino students who see Cinco de Mayo as "their day," Rodriguez told the five to either turn their T-shirts inside out or go home. The boys chose to leave.

For what it's worth, Cinco de Mayo is not a real holiday in Mexico and its celebration can more easily be traced to the marketing arm of U.S. beer companies. Still, some Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in the United States have adopted it, and so it's become a cultural battlefield.

If what happened at Live Oak High School were really about a surge of patriotism, what are the odds that the students would pick that day to sing "Yankee Doodle Dandy"? The answer: One in 365.

Latino students had planned a celebration of this pseudo Mexican holiday, and the T-shirt five -- who have since played the victim and sued the school for allegedly violating their First Amendment rights -- wanted to spoil the party.

Recently, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals let stand a lower court ruling that backed up the school administrators, and thus dealt another legal blow to the five students.

Besides causing a ruckus, the T-shirt brigade also stoked the culture wars, which never seem to end.

In 2010, a group of students from Lincoln East High School in Omaha, Neb., was suspended for making and distributing dozens of "green cards" in preparation for a soccer game with South High School, which is largely Hispanic. Lincoln East fans tossed the cards onto the field after the game like racist confetti.

In 2012, a San Antonio high school basketball game between Alamo Heights, a mostly white suburban school, and Edison, a predominantly Hispanic school, turned ugly when Alamo fans -- apparently believing they were at the Olympics -- started chanting "USA, USA!" Most of the Edison players were Mexican-American. This makes them part of the USA, even if some suggested otherwise.

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