Student suspended over haircut

Eighth-grader Andrew Duran walked into his school, Paso Del Norte, with three lines grooved into his hairdo on Thursday.

"I didn't think that having three lines was a big deal," Duran said. To him, it just added to what the kids are calling “swag.”

School officials told him that if the lines weren’t removed, he would face an in-school suspension until they were.

Yvonne Morales, Duran’s mother, said she didn’t receive a call from the school, so she went to the school on Friday to complain. She said she argued with a lady in the front office.

"And she's all, ‘You need to cut his hair,’ in front of everybody that was right there,” Morales said. “And I said, ‘Well guess what, I'm not cutting his hair.’"

Morales said that in order to fix the lines, she would have to shave her son’s head bald. She pointed out that the student handbook only says “no designs,” and she doesn’t consider the three lines a design.

Pat O’Neill, the assistant superintendent for the Socorro Independent School District, said that each school principal can determine what is distracting.

"We set a basic standard, and the campus can set one that's more stringent," O’Neill said.

Morales was also upset that no one from the school called her to let her know that her son was in trouble.

O’Neill said that because she pulled her son out of school before he was placed in suspension, the district’s policy of notifying parents was not broken.

"Let’s look at the big picture,” O’Neill said. “Why do school districts put in rules like this? It (the haircut) could be a sign that a student belongs to certain group, a certain affiliation."

"What is the big deal about three lines?” Morales asked. “I mean, three little lines, I would've completely understood if we went all the way around [his head] and gave him a design."

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