• By DEBRA LEMOINE
• Advocate Florida parishes bureau
• Published: Feb 6, 2010 - Page: 1B

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Maurepas High School officials sent a student home Friday for wearing a blue-and-white Indianapolis Colts football jersey to class on Black-and-Gold Day, an event staged to salute the New Orleans Saints, his father said.

Colts fan Brandon Frost, 17, said he was called out of his first-period class by Principal Steven Vampran and told to go home because he wore the Colts jersey on the day the school was celebrating the New Orleans Saints going to Super Bowl XLIV. The Saints will play the Colts in the big game on Sunday.

In response, Marjorie Esman, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, sent a letter to Vampran on Friday afternoon warning that his actions violated Frost’s First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

“This letter is to advise you that schools may not discriminate based on the content of messages that students wear on their clothing, and to urge you to respect the opinions of all students in your school as required by law,” Esman wrote.

Esman said that the ACLU’s concern is that Frost is not penalized for the school’s actions.

“Clearly, we want to make sure he doesn’t have anything on his record,” Esman said.

Vampran declined to comment Friday afternoon. A message left on Livingston Parish School Superintendent Bill Spear’s cell phone Friday afternoon drew no immediate response.

But a Livingston Parish School Board member said Frost wasn’t sent home but was told he couldn’t wear the blue-and-white jersey at school. Keith Martin, whose district includes Maurepas, said the school uniform requirements had been relaxed only for black and gold.

Martin said he planned to ask school system attorneys whether that violated Frost’s right to free speech, as the ACLU of Louisiana contends.

Martin said he had talked with both Vampran and Frost’s father, Larry Frost.

“I think we got things worked out,” Martin said.

According to Martin, a friend of Brandon Frost’s had asked Vampran on Thursday whether Frost could wear a Colts jersey and had been told “no.”

During a class on Thursday, Brandon Frost said, he talked about his plans to wear his jersey rather than Saints colors. He said the teacher warned him he’d get in trouble.

Larry Frost said he didn’t know about that when his son asked Thursday whether he could wear the Colts jersey to school. Frost said he told his son to come home if he was hassled too much.

Brandon Frost said he is not certain what formal action was taken against him but thinks what happened Friday might be considered an unexcused absence by the school.

Brandon Frost is a senior at Maurepas High School who recently joined the Louisiana Army National Guard and plans to attend Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond. He will go on his first training session with the Guard this weekend in Baker, he said.

The teenager moved to Maurepas three years ago from Indianapolis. He said he was a Colts fan for as long as he can remember.

“I follow the Colts heavily,” Frost said. “It’s something I take seriously.”

When he heard about Black-and-Gold Day, Frost said, he wanted to show his team spirit and wear his Joseph Addai jersey. Before joining the Colts four years ago, Addai played for LSU.

“You can’t offer other people a chance to celebrate their heritage and not offer it to someone else because they like another team,” Brandon Frost said.

Knowing that wearing the Colts jersey to school could potentially be a problem, Brandon Frost said, he first talked it over with his father.

“I told him, if it’s too big of a problem, if it’s too much trouble, then leave,” Larry Frost said.

Brandon Frost said Vampran called him out of his first class Friday and told him, “I don’t recall saying you could wear a Colts jersey on Black-and-Gold Day.”

He said he told the principal that his father had given him permission to go home if it was a problem.

“He started to get angry with me,” Frost said. “I thought I remember him saying, ‘If you like Indiana so much, why don’t you go back?’ ”

Vampran has acknowledged that he should not have said that, Martin said. He said no one sent Frost home — but no one kept him from leaving rather than changing shirts.

The Frost family contacted the School Board and the ACLU because it wanted to support Brandon, Larry Frost said. The ACLU sent the letter, and someone at the School Board office told Larry Frost that principals make the rules about dress-code matters.

“I don’t feel like it’s a good enough reason to keep him out of school,” Larry Frost said of his son’s Colts jersey encounter during Black-and-Gold Day at Maurepas High School.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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