Students at high school in Lowell barred from wearing the color brown

LOWELL, Mass. -- Remember that prized brown sweatshirt sitting in the closet you always loved to wear? Well, if you are a student at Molloy Alternative High School in Lowell, it might be best to keep it there.

School officials have recently banned the color brown at the school, due to the emergence of the Brown Mafia, a new teenage gang in Lowell whose members wear the color brown.

On Monday, Darren Sawyer, a student at the school, was approached by a school official and asked to change his chocolate-colored Aeropostale hooded sweatshirt and American Eagle T-shirt, because both violated the new dress code in the school handbook. Teachers offered him the choice of either a school-issued T-shirt or to call home and have appropriate clothes delivered to him. Sawyer, 17, refused to do either, referencing that he never heard of the Brown Mafia.

The Brown Mafia emerged several months ago in Lowell, according to school officials. The gang was formed by black and Hispanic teenagers, but also accepts members from other ethnic backgrounds.

Sawyer, who is a Caucasian, said that many of his new clothes, which he received for Christmas, are brown-colored.

School officials insist on standing by the policy, which says if the clothes in any way represent a gang, students must be told to change their clothes or they be let out of school.

Sawyer’s mother said that he would continue to wear the brown sweatshirt to school and will hire a lawyer if her son is sent home again.

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