By The Associated Press
PARACHUTE, Colo. — The Latina Colorado student who was banned from wearing a serape with the U.S.-Mexico flag at her high school graduation put on the garment despite the ban, partially covering it with another school band.
"Always stand up for what you believe in," Naomi Peña Villasano, a Grand Valley High School graduate, told the Colorado Post Independent after receiving her diploma Saturday in the city of Parachute.
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Peña Villasano's case is the latest dispute in the United States over what kind of graduation cultural attire is allowed at these ceremonies. "I am 200%: 100% American and 100% Mexican," the teenager had said at a recent school board meeting.
Naomi Peña Villasano, 18, graduated Saturday, May 27, from Grand Valley High School in Colorado.Courtesy Daisy Jasmin Estrada Borja
Peña Villasano sued school officials after they barred him from attending his graduation with the serape of the Mexican and U.S. flags. A federal judge had ruled Friday, a day before graduation, that the school district could ban him.
"The district is discriminating against the expression of different cultural heritages," his attorney Kenneth Parreno, of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said at Friday's hearing.
But the decision didn't stop the teenager: she put on the serape and partially covered it with a gold-colored one from a student organization to which she belongs, the Key Club International. No one tried to stop him from going on stage to receive his diploma.
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School officials said in a statement that their policy of not allowing serapes at graduation seeks to "protect the symbolic traditions that represent graduates' academic achievements and their services to the community" and that "each stole, cord or brooch worn over the graduate's toga symbolizes academic honors, school-sponsored activities and military enlistment."
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The district announced it will reconsider its policies before the next students graduate in spring 2024.
Similar disputes have taken place across the United States during graduation season.
This year, a transgender girl skipped her Mississippi high school graduation ceremony after being banned from wearing a dress to the ceremony.
In Oklahoma, a Native American graduate this month took legal action against a school district for removing a feather, a sacred religious object in her culture, from her cap ahead of her graduation ceremony in 2022.