School Lends an Ear to Legal Advice, Ends Jewelry Ban

--A 13-year-old boy has finally won his battle to wear an earring to school, now that school officials have listened to the advice of attorneys to drop the matter because it probably would not stand up in court. “I’m glad that it didn’t get any worse than it did, and I’m glad to have a mom who stood up for me the way she did,” said Michael Jordan, a student at Bates Middle School in Sumter, S.C., as classes started. “The boy is back in school, and if he wants to wear the earring, he can wear it. We won’t hassle him about it,” Supt. Lawrence Derthick Jr. said. Angela Jordan, Michael’s mother, said she had consented when her son wanted to get an earring during the final days of the last school year. She had generally gotten support from Michael’s classmates, and she had received support from other parents. “It’s fashion. My son isn’t punk,” she said. “He’s not by any means a juvenile delinquent.” The case involved the student’s most fundamental rights, said Steven Bates, director of American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina. “The lesson for school administrators is that it is important for them to realize that the Constitution follows students through the schoolhouse door,” Bates said. The Constitution “protects students from prejudice and cultural bias and just plain silly rules.”

--A 94-year-old Texas oilman and his wife, moved to sympathy by the Aug. 2 crash at Dallas--Fort Worth Airport of Delta Air Lines Flight 191, have donated ranch land worth $600,000 to a burn foundation. P.M. Fitzgearald and his wife, Melowene, donated 100 acres of Parker County pastureland to the Fort Worth Burn Foundation, more than doubling the foundation’s endowment. The couple transferred the property to the foundation, which is selling it to developers to generate needed cash. Many of the 134 victims and 31 survivors of the crash suffered severe burns.

--Robert (Evel) Knievel, the Montana daredevil, will return to the scene next month of his ill-fated, 1974 jump across the mile-wide Snake River Canyon on his specially built “skycycle.” Mike Dolton, manager of the Twin Falls, Ida., Chamber of Commerce, said that Knievel plans to attend the Sept. 9 dedication of a 3,000-pound granite marker in honor of the jump attempt. On Monday, Dolton received a call from Knievel, who had heard of the scheduled dedication and wanted to come. “He told me he is making the transition from his former daredevil role to that of an artist and he will bring some of his paintings along,” Dolton said.