Prom queen in a dress? Not this guy this night
Flanagan High School senior Omar Bonilla went from prom queen hopeful to not being able to go to prom at all. The school says he brought that punishment on himself.

BY MICHAEL VASQUEZ

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/22/1642177/prom-queen-in-a-dress-not-this.html

After coming out of the closet this, his senior year at Flanagan High, Omar Bonilla decided to take it a step further: run for prom queen.

He almost won -- Bonilla was among the top three vote-getters -- but in the past few days, it all unraveled.

Fearful that other students would try to beat up a prom-goer in drag, the school administration asked him to wear a tuxedo to Friday night's dance. And after two meetings with the school principal to plead for the right to wear a dress, Bonilla was slapped with a two-day suspension, the timing of which meant he couldn't go to the prom at all.

Well they did let him enter the contest, so where is the logic in their decision?

Sorry to throw a spanner at this, but I really think we need to give the benefit of the doubt to the principal here.

She parked in the wrong spot and ignored a request to move.

To be honest, it sounds like this young women was a bit high on the attention and let it go to her head, thinking she was above the rules of ordinary people.

When I was a lot younger, I would have always sided against authority figures. People in authority frequently do act like little Hitlers of course. But the world in build on rules and order. We all demand rules to suit us, the otherside of the coin is that we must accept rules that suit others.

We cannot choose which rules we wish to obey. And being penalised for ignoring rules is what each of us would demand if the effect were to cause us inconvienence.

Quote from: spacial on May 23, 2010, 04:47:58 AM
We cannot choose which rules we wish to obey. And being penalised for ignoring rules is what each of us would demand if the effect were to cause us inconvienence.

As you know I generally agree with a lot of your down to earth straight talking but on this one issue I am going to beg to respectfully differ.

Some rules are simply unjust and wrong - the effect of others trying to legislate to FORCE other people to live their lives in a way which is un-natural for them. That is just plain wrong and all freedom minded people not only can but should choose to ignore and resist those rules. Thus we not only can but must choose which rules we obey.

My point of view on this is simple:

Someone else's right to legislate to control my behaviour ends at the point where my behaviour ceases to DIRECTLY injure them.

I will comply, however unwillingly, with any law which prevents me injuring another human being in their right to life, health, freedom, freedom from hassle and provocation. All other rule I WILL disobey at every possible oportunity because I simply do not acknowlege the right of ANY legislator to make them.

By attending a prom in a dress no one is injured - therefore the rule is invalid and no right minded individual should be even thinking about thinking about complying unless they wish to.

To do otherwise is to allow victory to the control freaks and those who would deny us our right to change and be ourselves.

I would always sooner suffer some inconnvenience and live in freedom than have the trains run on time and live in an orderly society where I could not be myself. If you forced me to obey every moronic and oppressive rule I would have chosen death a long time ago.

Understand Jenny.

If the issue was the dress then it was wrong. More so because the dress issue had been, from the report, accepted for some time.

I'm simply pointing out that the principal has claimed that the issue was the disobedience of the directions from the school police over parking.

The issue of the safety has been mentioned, but it seems that it was the parking that led to her suspension.

QuoteThe suspension, said Drew, the spokeswoman, was solely because Bonilla had ignored security personnel after parking in the wrong place. Bonilla said he was in a daze that morning and he didn't hear the security guards.

Drew insisted otherwise.

``He did hear them, he turned around, he acknowledged them,'' Drew said. ``But he did not heed or stop. . . He ignored all authority along the way, and that's just not acceptable.''

School Police? What the hell is a school doing with it's own Police Force!

And if they have a Police Force, surely they can prevent this person being assaulted because of their clothes. Can't have it both ways.

I like his long hair and big smile.

His dress is like yu-na kim's.



Barbie~~

I think it's a bummer about the prom thing

She's a rather attractive gal 

Spacial - while (being young) I tend to distrust authority figures in general and I have to acknowledge that bias, I think in this case there's more to my reaction than just reflexive antagonism. I don't think it's reasonable to suspend a student over a minor parking violation.

When I was in school, which was only a decade ago, suspensions were considered one of the harshest punishments at the school's disposal and were used only when a student was willfully creating a dangerous or disruptive environment for other students - fighting/violence or threats thereof or repeated flagrant disruptions/rule violations. Suspending a student for a minor infraction like a parking violation would be akin to suspending him/her for a single incident of talking in class - it's inappropriate and it's an abdication of the school's responsibility to educate kids.

And while I gather that schools have become increasingly authoritarian since I was in high school, I don't think they've changed so much that it's now normal to suspend students for minor rule violations. After all, if it were, the schools would be empty. I'm fairly certain that the parking thing was just an excuse to suspend the student in question at this particular time.

Oh, and Omar is lovely. I only wish there were a more direct statement of how she identifies...I always get a little flustered about applying pronouns to trans* people profiled in mainstream media, because it's common for the stories to give the false impression that someone is gay and/or a drag queen when in fact she is transgendered or transsexual. Of course, I also get a little bit flustered about pronouns for drag queens.

I will certainly bow to your greater knowledge on this one kyril.

I was going on the information in the report.

When I was at school, the only student allowed to own a car was the head boy. And he could do basically whatever he wanted. Though he never, as far as I know, expressed any interest in changing his gender.

But on a plus side, if the support from other students is as great as is claimed, then this can only be a positive thing.

A parking ticket?  Really?  That's the best they could do?

Really, see I see it as finding some slightly absurd deal, instead of confronting the situation.  If the principal didn't want the student coming in a dress, he/she should have stood up and said so and been responsible for that decision.  This is first-rate chickensh*t, and everyone here knows that.

They have police - who can get a visitors parking place cleared pretty damn quick, but can't protect one student?  Really?  You need some better cops then.

This story is like a boatload of fail.  Both the administrator and the safety/police officials are, at the very least, radically overpaid.

I'd like to add that I think we may be risking, falling into the pit of assuming that anyone who appears to be transgendered and in some sort of conflict with authority must be an example of persecution.

It also is very short sighted to take reports in any press outlet, and especially any British press outlets, on face value.

That is a dangerous route.

Firstly because we will eventually find ourselves siding with miscreants and criminals.

Secondly, becuase we will end up alienating ourselves from mainstreme society.

We seek acceptance from society. Not to be judged by our expression, but by our contribution.

The question here seems to rest on the relative seriousness of this parking offense. How have other students, in this school been dealt with for this particular offense? Parking in the wrong place then ignoring the instructions of the school police to move?

There is no mention of that and I would have thought that that is the central issue here.

This is first-rate chickensh*t  -  This story is like a boatload of fail

And the stuff about the Principal and campus cops too 

Thank you for saying what I only thought about saying

The question here seems to rest on the relative seriousness of this parking offense. How have other students, in this school been dealt with for this particular offense? Parking in the wrong place then ignoring the instructions of the school police to move

Well I don't know about other students, but I can say that pretty much standard operating procedure would be to ticket and tow the car.  I mean what do they do in your neck of the woods?   The ticket could be $20-$40, and the two, $150-200.  That seems not only adequate, but solves the problem as the coveted and precious parking place would have been vacant the second the wrecker dragged the offending vehicle away.

TG or not, I'm assuming any high school student when dealing with the administrator types is being persecuted.  If there was a good reason for this, then let's hear it.  If not, it sounds petty, vindictive, and 'because I said so', you know, like most administrators.  You know, if you can't do, teach, if you can't teach, teach gym, if you can't teach gym, administrate.