A group of students at a Dearborn, Mo., high school is in hot water over senior class sweatshirts depicting the number 11 as the twin towers and the school’s bird mascot flying toward it above the words, “You can’t bring us down.”
The question is, nearly a decade later, is it still too soon for 9/11 references?
Michael Jackson jokes were acceptable the second Perez Hilton announced his death. Holocaust jokes will probably never be OK. But 9/11 falls into a gray area that no one can agree on.
Just weeks after the attack, Gilbert Gottfried joked during a Hugh Hefner roast that he couldn’t get a direct flight to New York because of a detour to the Empire State Building. Definitely too soon.
But is there really any harm in students who hadn’t even hit puberty at the time of the attack referencing it as a symbol of school pride?
The students were not punished because they seemed not to mean offense. According to a Detroit Free Press article, the pardon earned the school a pat on the back from the American Civil Liberties Union—yep, the same ACLU that cried for Gainesville students’ First-Amendment right to wear shirts that read ‘Islam is of the Devil’ in red letters.
Now, though, they’re happy with the absence of punishment because instead of only offending the sane, this message has the potential to offend America as a whole.
Offensive or not, though, the students should be allowed to wear the design. In its most innocent connotation, the design relates pride in a strong senior class acting as a microcosm of a strong country. At its worst, the shirts make light of an incident that still stings many Americans.
Either way, it’s time to let go. To continue walking on eggshells is to perpetuate a sense of fear, and if America is going to move on, it needs to do it. All or nothing.
