A New Hampshire high school senior who recently completed Marine Corps training has been told that he’s not allowed to openly wear his military uniform at his graduation this weekend because it goes against the idea of having a “unified class celebration of the accomplishment of achieving a high school diploma.”
Brandon Garabrant, an 18-year-old student at ConVal Regional High School in Petersborough, N.H., was planning on wearing his dress blues as he crossed the stage, but the school is not letting him – instead insisting that he wear the uniform under his cap and gown.
“I think covering up with a cap and gown is disgraceful to the uniform,” Garabrant’s mother, Jessie, told WMUR. “Brandon earned this right and he went above and beyond what he needed to do in high school.”
The family learned of the school’s policy when Jessie was sent an email from the school principal informing her that the high school’s student council expects all students to wear caps and gowns – regardless of the fact that members of the military are required to wear their uniforms to ceremonies.
“With all due respect to the military, it’s not a celebration of what’s next, what’s after that,” ConVal Principal Brian Pickering told the New Hampshire Union Leader. “This has been a procedure for a number of years at ConVal High School.
The email did say that Brandon can wear cords or pins on his gown, but he doesn’t want his uniform hidden at all.
Garabrant’s mother isn’t the only family member upset with the principal’s request. Brandon’s younger sister Mykala created a petition in the hopes of getting her brother permission to wear just his uniform.
“Their response was, ‘Why can’t he wear it? That’s dumb.’ Or they were like, ‘I don’t care what he wears,'” she told WMUR.
Regardless of the outcome, Garabrant will proudly attend Marine combat training following graduation and go on to study combat engineering, according to WMUR.
