Teen Who Wore Kilt Gets School Apology

High School Senior Was Reprimanded For Wearing Kilt To School Dance

(CBS/AP)  School officials have apologized to a teenager who was ordered to change clothes after he wore a kilt to a school dance.

Jackson High School senior Nathan Warmack received a letter Monday from Superintendent Ron Anderson, who apologized for "the fact that he was humiliated and not permitted to wear his kilt" to the dance.

Anderson also promised to train staff in properly interpreting the dress code.

Warmack, 18, said his actions helped fight discrimination.

"It's just one of the walls that needs to be broken down, but I feel I helped a lot," he said.

Warmack wore a kilt to a dance on Nov. 5 with a dress shirt and tie as a way to honor his Scottish heritage. The principal told Warmack to change into pants. The decision sparked an Internet petition and angered Scottish organizations that insisted the student's outfit was appropriate.

More than 1,600 people have signed the petition seeking an apology for the high school senior.

"It's a kilt. It's going to turn heads, but I never believed it would have become what it is," Warmack said last month when the controversy started.

Other schools around the country also have wrestled with the issue. A principal in Victoria, Texas, ordered two boys into "more appropriate" attire when they wore kilts to school in 1992, saying: "I know kilts. Those weren't kilts and the boys aren't Scots."

In 1993, a student in Fayette County, Ga., was not allowed to enter his prom at McIntosh High School because he showed up in a kilt and refused to change clothes.

And while they weren't trying to dress in kilts, a few boys were allowed to wear skirts to class at Franklin Community High School in Indiana in 1997, when a superintendent said different people express themselves in different ways.