Liliana Sosa, 18, a senior at Pendleton High School, reflects Wednesday, May 31, 2023, on the obstacles she endured to get the school to accept her cultural sash for her graduation June 3.

PENDLETON — When Pendleton High School senior Liliana Sosa entered the principal’s office last week, she was trying to observe standard procedure by asking if she could wear a sash that represented her Hispanic cultural heritage to graduation.

What she said she didn’t expect was for Principal Patrick Dutcher to decline her request, a decision that has since been reversed.

“I just wanted to be respectful, I didn’t want to break any rules,” Sosa said. “The principal said that we couldn’t do it, but that he’d ask the school board the next day. That confused me because I know at past graduations there have been students wearing cultural regalia.”

The next morning when Sosa and her fellow high school seniors attended a meeting, she explained the school would not allow them to wear any kind of cultural regalia to graduation Saturday, June 3.

“After hearing this, I was really upset about it, so I went and looked through all of the student handbooks and laws related to what we can wear at graduation,” Sosa said. “I put together an email that I sent to the superintendent of the school district, his assistant and the school board members.”

The email seemed to work.

“After that, when I went back to school, the principal told me they’d decided to reverse the decision,” she said.

Dutcher said the trouble came when interpreting House Bill 2052, which creates specific exceptions for graduates from Native and Indigenous communities and cultures to wear culturally significant regalia to graduation. Though Native and Indigenous communities were covered, the bill didn’t detail any other exceptions.

“The bill as written creates a gray area because it’s one of those things where there are traditions and a way of doing things,” he said. “I was happy Liliana wrote a really great email to our school board and our superintendent because I’m not going to be the one to challenge the traditions of how Pendleton has done things. I’m not going to be the person sitting in this chair, putting the high school on an island. Liliana’s actions push for meaningful change.”

After Sosa’s successful appeal, Dutcher said he agreed to individually approve each student’s request to wear their cultural regalia until a more formal solution could be codified into the books.

“The cool thing, was after we reversed this decision, Liliana and about five of her Hispanic friends came to get their sashes approved, but then other students that hadn’t been involved wanted to represent their cultures as well,” Dutcher said. “We have a Vietnamese student, for instance, ask to wear a cultural sash to their graduation. I think that’s heading in the right direction.”

Sosa said she was happy that she’d be able to wear her sash, which she purchased from a producer on the online retailer Etsy and then customized.

“I’m happy, but I feel like this isn’t something that students should have to advocate for,” she said. “I feel like that’s something that we as students should automatically have the right to do. It annoyed me in the first place, but now I’m happy that they made the right decision.”

Visibility of success is important in a place such as Pendleton, Sosa said, due to low minority representation at the school.

“The school is primarily white, there are not a lot of minority groups, and I feel like we don’t get as represented sometimes,” Sosa said. “I feel like wearing this sash is something I can do to represent my background.”