A Florida school has threatened to expel a 12-year-old student for a truly ridiculous reason: having natural hair.
Vanessa VanDyke rocks a beautiful head of hair. It's big and full and just grows out of her head like that. But the school doesn't care that's how her hair grows naturally, and they've given her a week to either straighten or cut her hair or find a new school.
'It says that I'm unique,' Vanessa said. 'First of all, it's puffy and I like it that way. I know people will tease me about it because it's not straight. I don't fit in.'
Vanessa's hair is being cited as a dress code violation. The school's dress code mandates that 'hair must be a natural color and not a distraction.' Banned styles include Mohawks and shaved designs. Vanessa's hair just grows out of her head this way.
Vanessa has been wearing her hair like that since the start of the school year, but the administration did not consider it a problem until now. The issue came up when Vanessa complained to the school about some students bullying her because of her hair. Rather than tell the students to stop picking on Vanessa, they told Vanessa to get rid of the hair, suddenly claiming that it was 'a distraction.'
It's a pretty jerk move for any school administration to respond to a bullying complaint with, 'Well stop doing the thing the bullies don't like!'
'It seems to me that they're blaming her. ... A distraction to one person is not a distraction to another,' Vanessa's mother, Sabrina Kent, said to Click Orlando. 'You can have a kid come in with pimples on his face. Are you going to call that a distraction?'
Vanessa says she doesn't want to leave her school and the friends and teachers she knows already, but she says she'd rather do that than let the school tell her there's something wrong with her hair, and Vanessa's mother supports her.
'If she wants her hair like that, she will keep her hair like that,' Kent said. 'There are people out there who may think that natural hair is not appropriate. She is beautiful the way she is.'
Via The Frisky/Photo: ClickOrlando
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