With one Indiana high school's close-minded approach to a popular Ball State University logo, we might have to place a new sign outside Worthen Arena and Scheumann Stadium soon:
"WARNING: This event may contain or incite loud chants with double meanings, some sexual in nature. Fan discretion is advised.
"CHILDREN: Earmuffs!"
I jest about the sign, but the circumstance prompting the satire is real.
As reported in Tuesday's Daily News, a Fort Wayne high school barred a student from wearing his "BALL U" T-shirt to class because of its double meaning. Despite the many obvious wrongs here, we should leverage this challenge to our advantage.
Ball State is an innovative, vibrant campus full of talented and creative minds. This is a dynamic community with problem solvers and creative thinkers. Together we can come together with enough forward momentum to meet a positive resolve to this ban.
We need a new T-shirt with a fresh, edgy double entendre.
"Ball-U" is so circa "Everything You Need" marketing days. We need an untarnished icon of sexual undertone. My fellow students, let's create these new designs. We'll wear our new shirts to the next home football game, judge them at halftime and pick a new perverted icon to move us forward!
As a Fort Wayne native, I know the conservative hotbed in which Carroll High School sits. Fort Wayne, like the cities most of Ball State's students hail from, is only as free speaking as the youth in the community. I'd like to say most Fort Wayne parents would chuckle at the hilarity of the Ball-U line, but I know better. The parents are the ones voting in the school board members, who in turn bring in the schools' administrators. The principal might be a fool for enforcing the policy, but he's living up to his community's standards as a matter of politic.
When over-sensitive schools (and districts) get their community-approved undergarments in a bunch, trivial matters of this nature become the poster events for censorship conversations. As the world stands today, with China's take on the Internet, a heavily debated war and a United States presidential election, any-aged U.S. citizen should not fear threats of censorship because of some screen print on their poly-cotton T-shirt.
This is far beyond perverted sayings. This is less trivial than this single incident.
If anything, we should argue where and with how much energy that shirt was made. We should argue whether the young man wearing the shirt will see himself or someone he knows face (another) tour of duty. We should argue the severity of punishment for people attacked because of what their shirts say and how it correlates to their beliefs.
This subject revives the high school dress code debate in which the Supreme Court stands behind the schools.
Legally speaking, the Carroll situation is not a matter of censorship. Nothing will change here. With the stereotypical threat of drugs and liquor to our precious, innocent high school youth, it's asinine to see a school trivializing its assets over a T-shirt with a well-known "logo" of a state university.
State leaders wonder why we, the youth, are fleeing the "Crossroads of America" en masse. Every mind crossing the state must experience a close-minded brain-wash.
President Gora, distinguished Board of Trustees and Governor Daniels - we've reached the end of BSU. The nature of our university's historic name is too risky - err, bold - for our modern times! "Ball" might pay homage to the family that started our great school, but if you didn't know: it's also slang for a part of the male genitalia. *giggle* This information is far too damaging to the innocent minds of high school students across this state. When these abstinence-only sex education-backing parents discover their students not only learn about comprehensive sex, but have it here, too; they'll be ecstatic! Heaven forbid they engage in homosexual relations. Oh no's!
We need to move forward. Never mind the new T-shirt design; this university clearly needs a new name. Gather the committees! If the Core Curriculum was any indication, we'll have this done in four years. Print the marketing materials. Start a contest, even. What a perfect way to draw community input!
When we're done with that, how about renaming Benny? I think I saw that name in a porn once.
Write to Dave at heydave@bewilderedsociety.com
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