Arizona Teen-Ager Scolded for Wearing ‘Penguin’ T-Shirt

COLORADO CITY, Ariz. — A 14-year-old was reprimanded for wearing a T-shirt to school depicting The Penguin, Batman’s arch enemy. His mother said the principal complained that wearing the shirt was a sign of devil worship.

James Bateman said he is tired of the rigidity in Colorado City, a primarily polygamous, breakaway-Mormon town in the Arizona Strip, a mile from the Utah line. He said he was hassled by students and teachers two years ago when he wore short-sleeved shirts to school.

“They kept saying that I was wicked,” he said in Wednesday’s edition of the Arizona Republic. “But I just think I’m normal.”

On Nov. 4, James wore the T-shirt picturing actor Danny DeVito as The Penguin. By lunchtime he was in the office of Principal Lawrence Steed, who “told me that my T-shirt was not appropriate in his school,” the youth said in an affidavit. He said Steed told him “that it interferes with my learning” and “that I must go home and change it.”

No one answered the telephone at the school on Wednesday, Veterans Day, and a woman at Steed’s home said he was out of town and would not return until next week.