200703311308Shiver me timbers! A high school student in North Buncombe, NC has been suspended for a day for dressing like a pirate and coming to school wearing an eyebpatch and brandishing an inflatable cutlass:

The sophomore spent Wednesday at home after an administrator took issue with his accessories.

Buncombe County Schools says the eye patch was disruptive to classroom instruction. The student’s refusal to take it off after four warnings led to discipline, the district said.

“I feel like my First Amendment was violated,” Killian, 16, said. “Freedom of religion and freedom of expression. That’s what I tried to do, and I got shot down.”

Freedom of religion?

Yes, Killian says, his “pirate regalia” is part of his faith — the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.


Killian claims to be part of the Pastafarian religion, which requires him to dress like a pirate. We’re impressed. Where do we study our catechism?

1 COMMENT

  2. Pirate garb is a specialty of the Grated Cheese Order, a rather silly but also powerful group within the larger Church. Those school authorities better watch out!

  3. Having grown up in the area, there is no such town as “North Buncombe, NC”; as the article notes, it’s Buncombe country, and the high school is named North Buncombe High as it’s in the northern part of the county.

    Although Asheville (by far the largest town in the area and in the county) has gotten a lot more liberal and loose since I was in the area, I gotta figure any kid in that area who’s a Pastafarian is in for a world of hurt from his fellow majority evangelical classmates.