Recently girls from the volleyball team at Illinois High School have been forced to remove t-shirts due to gang colors being on the shirts. The township does not have history of gang violence and the leader of the volleyball team, Alison Daniels, is a NHS member. The students obviously do not have intentions on representing gangs and clearly are demonstrated school pride throwing in black for a twist. The school is rejecting the students creativity and is causing school spirit to drop. The students at Illinois High School should be allowed to incorporate black into school shirts, and be able to wear so called gang colors as long as their is no threat to the student, and no gang symbols are visibly present.
The stress over these t-shirts and colors is overall decreasing support for Illinois High School. Both parents and students are outraged and feel that the Illinois High School board is overreacting. In an area where gangs are not an issue, why stop the students from looking fashionable. Black helps create a little toughness. Perhaps this can help boost the teams record or boost confidence. Perhaps the colors just look good and flow together.
Many professional teams have gang colors. The Chicago Bulls sport red and black for nearly all season. The Chicago Cubs wear red and blue, which can be seen as a gang color. If these teams and role models can wear these colors, then why not high school students? The whole idea of gangs and gang colors is overrated. The students do not mean harm and are not doing any thing wrong wearing these colors. The day when the girls volleyball team goes crazy and throws up gang signs and have gang symbols on their shirts, then their is an issue.
Basically if the girls are causing no harm then they should be allowed to wear the black into their shirts. Both the parents and the students will be happy. A gang issue should not be created where no gangs exist. Let the girls play, let em look how they want to look,and let the teams be creative.