{"id":12550,"date":"2024-06-14T09:16:55","date_gmt":"2024-06-14T09:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/used82.com\/?p=12550"},"modified":"2024-06-14T09:16:55","modified_gmt":"2024-06-14T09:16:55","slug":"father-outraged-as-teen-daughter-gets-banned-from-walking-graduation-wearing-her-traditional-hawaiian-lei","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/used82.com\/?p=12550","title":{"rendered":"Father outraged as teen daughter gets banned from walking graduation wearing her traditional Hawaiian lei"},"content":{"rendered":"

People have questioned why a student wasn’t allowed to wear a Hawaiian lei at her graduation<\/h2>\n

A furious father hit out at his daughter’s school after she wasn’t allowed to wear a traditional Hawaiian lei to her graduation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sophia Noelani Iliana Benzon was set to graduate Eastlake High School in Chula Vista earlier this month and sported a beautiful lei around her neck.<\/p>\n

But shortly before she was supposed to take part in the ceremony, Sophia and her family – some of which were also wearing leis – were stopped by\u00a0school<\/a>\u00a0staff members.<\/p>\n

A heated encounter between Sophia’s family and a teacher was videoed and uploaded to\u00a0TikTok<\/a>, where the member of school staff apologized for the situation but insisted that the student couldn’t wear the lei because it went against the school’s policy.<\/p>\n

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\"Sophia<\/div>\n

Sophia was stopped from taking part in the ceremony. (kainoa_2005\/Instagram)<\/cite><\/div>\n

Sophia’s father raged: “You’re not sorry. I don’t want to hear sorry, I want my daughter to be out on that field walking with her traditional garb like every one of my other family members in the past who have graduated.”<\/p>\n

Apparently they needed to get school district’s permission for Sophia to wear the lei, but the Benzon family insisted that they did.<\/p>\n

Sophia’s brother Kainoa has since uploaded the clip to TikTok and it’s been viewed almost seven million times.<\/p>\n

He captioned the now-viral<\/a>\u00a0video: “My sister was denied from walking at her graduation minutes before her ceremony because school staff would not let her wear traditional\u00a0Hawaiian<\/a>\u00a0lei\u2019s.<\/p>\n

“After getting further approval from the district board to wear them, faculty members further then restricted access to having her phone and forced Sophia, A MINOR, to verbally say she was not going to participate in the ceremony in order for her to contact her parents after the fact.”<\/p>\n