Mr. Curley
Eng. Comp. 2
August 13, 2013
Letter to the Editor Your recent article titled, “Boobies bracelet ban struck in Eastern PA” (August 6), detailing the court’s decision struck down the ban on the bracelets that support breast cancer awareness, brought back memories of when I was in high school wearing the same bracelet. I can easily relate to and feel sympathy for the hardship that the girls in this article had to undergo. The article discusses two young girls and their decisions and consequences of being suspended for trying to express themselves and raise awareness for breast cancer by wearing the bracelets. A group of friends and I dealt with the same dilemma in high school when wearing the same arm bands around. Before being told to remove the bracelets we wore them around the school for almost an entire week without any problem, it wasn’t until we refused to remove them that it was made into a big deal. We were told to remove or flip over the bracelets because they were a “distraction” and “vulgar to others”, including faculty and if we did not remove them we would receive in school suspension and we were given just that. The bracelets were designed by a nonprofit Keep a Breast Foundation of Carlsbad, CA, to promote breast cancer awareness among young people. According to the American Cancer Society there are about 232,340 new cases of breast cancer in women this year and of those about 39,620 deaths so far. Simple gestures like the bracelets discussed in the article are only to help raise awareness for those pushing the battle of Breast Cancer, not to be seen as a stirred up controversy. I felt and still feel that removing the bracelets were censuring our ability to express ourselves and raise awareness for the disease that affected two people very close to all of us.
http://www.cancer.org/cancer/breastcancer/overviewguide/breast-cancer-overview-key-statistics
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