March 28, 2024

Columnist should have taken Plato’s advice

To the editor:

In response to Dave Hon’s column Tuesday, Oct. 15, I will first refer to a “Quoteable” by Plato our paper published some time back, which remains on my refrigerator. It reads, “You are young, my son, and, as years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain, therefore, awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters.”

NHS students’ rights were not violated, and I would have been disappointed — if not angered — had the athletic director and principal allowed then students wearing “BOOBZ” to continue. Actually, “boob” is a slang term in the dictionary. Slang, meaning “nonstandard vocabulary of a given culture consisting of arbitrary and ephemeral figures of speech characterized by spontaneity and sometimes raciness.”

Breast cancer is a very serious matter and whomever initially started the “I love boobies” wrist bands, etc. were taking advantage of a deadly cancer to make themselves a buck.

Elementary and younger children, who are at the football games, hear the word “boob” and it is not their first instinct to think of breast cancer. It is “racy” slang word with, yes, sexual exploitation insinuated.

Just as there are loopholes in laws regarding language in radio songs and on TV, we are not winning healthy battles or setting better standards by finding ways to allow raciness and obscenity in public. There are issues of importance to use your skills at — and I do recognize writing skill in Dave’s articles — rather than encouraging young sons to argue their “rights.”

I would also suggest our public school officials to refrain from promoting breast cancer awareness and fundraising at K-12 sporting events, as it is opening a whole ball of wax not related to our students’ education, or the sports themselves. How do you now justify turning down every fundraising awareness group out there?

Stick to sports and education.

Melinda Burgess

Newton