Educators Wary of Raiders’ Jackets

Alfredo Caro proudly wears his black Los Angeles Raiders jacket as an eighth-grader at Memorial Junior High in Barrio Logan because the traditional rough-and-tumble team is “bad,” which means “great” to a typical urban teen-ager.

Rico Trujillo and Eddie Garibay, student government leaders at Memorial, say they and many of their classmates find Raider jackets popular because of the team’s silver and black colors. “Everybody likes them because they match to a lot of clothes,” Trujillo said.

A few miles south, however, National City Junior High Principal Gloria Samson has banned black Raiders jackets and caps, with their pirate logos, from her school because they have been used by students to signify gang membership.

“The combination of the colors with the image of the (Raiders) being a ‘killer’ team was too negative and offensive to be acceptable,” Samson said, adding that several incidents took place at the school before the ban was put into place.

As the Raiders prepare to battle the hometown Chargers on Sunday in San Diego, their mystique as the longstanding “bad boys of football” extends beyond the stadium and their sometimes raucous fans, to junior- and senior-high campuses in urban areas throughout the state.

Educators walk a fine line between allowing students to wear the jackets as a fashion or cultural statement, and banning them because of gang connotations. The results vary from school to school, and district to district.

“Teen-agers in general like to identify with the Raiders--and other sports teams--because they’ve been on top for so long,” said Larry Miller, a San Diego Unified School District police officer who often talks with teachers about how to decide when student clothing is inappropriate.

“It’s also a tradition in the Hispanic community to wear black, as a fashion statement. So we try to tell teachers that, unless kids are doing something to signify a gang association, leave them alone because you’ll make things worse by making a big deal out of the jacket.”

Memorial Principal Tony Alfaro allows Raiders jackets and caps but prohibits black jackets in so-called “bomber” and “cascade” styles because they have more of a direct gang link.

“Sure, the Raiders jackets can symbolize a macho attitude--the kids know the team’s reputation--and they like to associate with that bravado; it’s a status symbol,” Alfaro said.

“But I believe the football logo removes a gang mentality and substitutes a team mentality for the students--and that’s OK.”

Eighth-grader Caro and his buddy Alfredo Salazar conceded that some gang members will wear Raiders jackets because the gangs also “want to look cool.”

But they agreed with their peer Trujillo, who said that most students wearing Raiders jackets or caps are not members of gangs, but rather teen-agers who either follow the team’s fortunes or consider themselves more stylish in black.

Principal Alfaro has come up with a satin jacket, in various colors with the Memorial eagle logo on it, as an alternative way to boost school loyalty.

“We give them away to the student-of-the-month and to other achievers, and 95% of our kids are happy to wear them and represent the school,” he said. But whether a Raiders or Memorial jacket, “the important thing is for us to remove the gang symbolism.”

School police officer Bob Martin tells teachers to look for alterations to a Raiders cap, for example, in determining whether there is more to the clothing than fashion or macho spirit.

“If you color in the Raider insignia with red, then you’ve got red and black, and that’s a color of the (black) Piru” or “blood-set” gangs in San Diego, Martin said.

“In that case, I’d say the student wasn’t so much interested in the Raiders or their colors,” Martin said. At Bell Junior High in Paradise Hills, the staff decided last year to ban all caps because they can be easily altered, but it still allows sport jackets.

“At this point, there doesn’t appear to be a (gang) pattern or trend, and I don’t want to squelch” students too much, Principal Jody Bruhn said.

But, to Samson at National City Junior High, students were wearing Raiders jackets to intimidate other students. A similar ban on the jackets is also in place at Castle Park Middle School in Chula Vista.

“You can’t allow kids to intimidate or be intimidated because I’m here to educate, not play any games,” Samson said. “So I’ve neutralized the school by allowing no caps of any kind, no sports jackets of any kind, and I’ve had good support from parents and the community.”

Samson does allow white jackets or shirts with the Raider logo. “It’s not the football team itself but the symbolic colors” along with the image that cause the problems, she said.

“And, if the only jacket the student had was (a black Raiders) one, we will provide a very clean, usable jacket as an alternative, if (buying) one would be a financial burden for parents.”