White hats, black coats, good hearts
Among the hundreds of stories on the wire this week was a short report that some Denver-area schools have banned black trench coats. Rejecting a symbol of Tuesday's massacre, school districts in Denver, Douglas and parts of Adams counties are prohibiting students from wearing the dusters.
Officials said the coats are large enough to hide weapons. Further, they are "intimidating and inappropriate." They can be "alarming enough to others that it disrupts the educational environment," Susan Carlson, spokeswoman for Adams County schools, told the Associated Press.
Elsewhere it was reported that police had cited an Englewood high school student for wearing a leather collar said to be "Goth style." A student attending the Denver School of the Arts says a teacher confiscated her black trench coat. It's the only winter coat she owns.
Schools are hardly to blame for trying to keep peace. Students wearing trench coats may well be harassed. Trench coats may well obscure weapons. And trench coats may well be intimidating, especially now. But school rules must be sensitive not only to inadvertent intimidation and potential harassment. They also need to make sense. Fortunately, the Boulder Valley School District is making sense.
Bill Van Howe, director of secondary education for Boulder schools, said the district discussed the trench-coat issue this week, following the massacre at Littleton's Columbine High School. Because the killers were loosely affiliated with the so-called Trenchcoat Mafia and with Gothic attire, local school officials broached the topic of trench coats, Van Howe said. Some parents had asked about the district's policy, too. After the other school districts banned the outerwear, Jefferson County's district considered making the same move, but has not yet done so. Columbine High is in Jefferson County.
"At this point, our position is that the issues go a lot deeper than what a person is wearing or what color clothing they have on," Van Howe said. If you ban trench coats, the next step might be banning certain sports wear, which has also been tainted by a violent minority. The real issue is tolerance. Those who dress and act differently shouldn't be harassed. "It comes down to a matter of good old freedom in the United States of America," Van Howe said.
Besides, a trench coat is an ambiguous symbol. Richard Martin, curator of the costume institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, talked with Camera reporter Halle Shilling this week about trench coats. The garments' name comes from their use by soldiers in World War I trenches, Martin said. But he said the design also signifies 19th-century westerners and those who view themselves as righteous outlaws. The coats are also veritable cocoons, protecting wearers from both the weather and the world.
Trench coats can symbolize the military. They can symbolize isolation. They can signify bad weather.
The act of wearing trench coats is as meaningless as wearing black. Last month, the Fairview High School student newspaper profiled some local "Gothic" students, who may wear trench coats and may wear black. Of four students pictured with the story, three wore black and one seems to have a trench coat. None espoused guns, revenge or racism. They talked of tolerance.
The schools' decision to ban ambiguously symbolic clothing is itself symbolic. By themselves, black coats mean no more than white hats. A black coat may hide a heart of darkness or of gold.
Clint Talbott's column appears on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach him at (303) 473-1367 or talbottc@boulderpublishing.com.
April 24, 1999
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