A Black student is ditching his South Dakota high school after administrators ordered him to cut his hair, saying his current style didn’t adhere to district policy—a rule critics call discriminatory BS.
According to local news network KCAU 9 Sioux City, Braxton Schafer is leaving O’Gorman High School at the end of the semester. His adoptive parents, who are white, said they are unsure which school Braxton will attend, but they know that he will not be back at O’Gorman.
“We don’t necessarily agree with the rule,” Braxton’s father, Derrick Schafer, told the Argus Leader. “We think it’s culturally biased.”
ADVERTISEMENT
The student handbook of O’Gorman High School in Sioux Falls dictates that students must keep their hair tinted in “the realm of normal hair color” for the child. Also, their hair “must be neat and clean in appearance and must not be a distraction to others.”
“Males must keep hair length above the eyes and not touching the collar,” the policy states. “Sideburns must not extend below the ear lobe. Males are not allowed to have their hair in a ponytail or bun.”
Braxton, 14, wears locs that sweep past his shoulders.
“He’s had one haircut his entire life, so cutting his hair would be significant,” Braxton’s father, Derrick Schaefer, told outlet KSFY Sioux Falls.
On Aug. 24, the school held an open house where assistant principal Alex Anderson told Braxton’s parents their son’s hair violated district guidelines, KSFY reported. The freshman’s parents said they were open to other options, but they would not agree to cutting their son’s hair.
According to KCAU, Bishop O’Gorman Catholic Schools President Kyle Groos said the issue isn’t Braxton’s hairstyle but how long the locs are.
But Toni Schafer, Braxton’s mom, said she believes limiting the length of locs is culturally insensitive. She said Braxton never received complaints from district officials until he entered high school.
“In order to make a crown for strength, power, spirituality, it’s in the length and making yourself a crown,” she told the Argus Leader.
Derrick Schafer said he told his son that he could either stay at the school but he would have to cut his hair, or keep his hairstyle but find another school.
“Ultimately we wanted it to be his decision,” he told KCAU. “He said he loves the school, he loves the kids, but he doesn’t want to cut his hair.”
Since the debacle surfaced, followers rallied in support of Braxton on Toni’s Facebook page.
“I do not understand why someone’s hair is an issue in 2022,” Caron Wise Delamontanya wrote. “Braxton has always been a good example for others in the ways the principal talked about. He will make it through this.”
“It’s time to change the policy. Perhaps alumni can band together, what can we do?” Kimberly Ann wrote. “His hair is beautiful!”
Others compared the issue to the history of Catholic boarding schools forcing Native American children to assimilate.
In a statement sent to The Daily Beast, a spokesperson for the Bishop O’Gorman Catholic Schools administration said that guidelines for students are updated every five years “with input from all stakeholders.”
“In 2018, 80 percent of parents said that the dress code requirement regarding male hair length should remain part of the dress code,” the statement read.
Implying that locs are the same as dreadlocks, which tend to be associated with a Rastafarian lifestyle, the statement continued, “The dress code allows for culturally appropriate hairstyles such as dreadlocks. Multiple students at our school have dreadlocks that meet the dress code policy.”
The statement added, “It is common practice at the beginning of the school year to have to visit with numerous students about the length of their hair.”
The statement said that school administration tried to discuss the issue with Braxton’s family, but insinuated that his parents were instead more eager to voice their frustrations on social media.
“Despite representations to the contrary, at no time did school administrators tell the parents that if the student did not cut his hair he would have to leave or be expelled,” the statement said.
“It’s incredibly stressful, and [Braxton] feels kind of like an outsider anyways, because when you’re one of very few [Black students], and I think he might be the only one there with locs, he’s devastated, basically,” Toni Schafer said, according to the Argus Leader.
In March, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the CROWN Act to protect Black American natural hairstyles in public places. The act will become a federally-mandated law if it passes the Senate. Several states have passed their own CROWN Acts but South Dakota is not among them, according to Glamour.
The Biden administration said the CROWN Act “would prohibit discrimination based on hair texture and protective hairstyles that are commonly associated with a particular race or national origin, including locs, cornrows, braids, twists, Bantu knots, and Afros. The bill would require that discrimination on this basis be treated as if it were race or national origin discrimination.”
O’Gorman High School administrators said they would “welcome further dialogue” with the Schafer family in order to find a “solution that would allow the student to stay at our school.”
