It's a legal dilemma. If you allow one, you have to allow all. The significance of graduation becomes convoluted when you have so many ethnic and religious groups expressing their own way. We can't allow religious expression during our ceremonies. We have to require them to wear a cap and gown not by choice but by mandate.
Public education is for all.
At Rio Grande High School, some students are gang members, and Mr. Jojola said that the school administrators fears that the young gangsters would want to wear gang colors and gang styles like baggy pants and hair nets to graduation if American Indian students wear Native dress. But American Indian attire represents ancient cultures and does not carry the negative connotation of gang styles, he said. As to the question of allowing others, we said ours is a culture, not a fad thing. Anyone can get into a gang and get baggy clothes. This is not the first year that American Indian students have been denied the chance to wear traditional dress at graduation.