The family of a California high school senior is fuming after the teen's school forbade her from walking during the graduation ceremony because she was sporting a traditional Hawaiian lei.
On June 7, Sophia Noelani Iliana Benzon was scheduled to graduate from Chula Vista's Eastlake High School . She wore the lei around her neck for the occasion. However, minutes before she was meant to walk with the rest of her classmates, school officials halted her family in the gymnasium.
According to Julian Benzon, Sophia's elder brother, the school gave her the ultimatum to remove her lei or leave the event. Kurt Benzon, Sophia's father, expressed his disapproval to a female school staffer who was preventing his daughter from experiencing her once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Kainoa, Sophia's other brother, recorded the furious exchange and uploaded it to TikTok, where it received more than 6.8 million views. According to Benzon, they have prior authorization from the district for Sophia to wear the lei.
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One of Sophia's brothers said they were incredibly important since they gave her the lei over the years. These clothes are frequently given to loved ones on important occasions like birthdays, marriages, and graduations by families with Hawaiian ancestry. "It takes us years to get these lei, and we don't get them every graduation," the brother says in the video to a school official wearing a sun hat.
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"I'm very sorry," the woman begins before being interrupted by Benzon. "You are not sorry. I don't want to hear sorry; I want my daughter to be out on that field walking in traditional costume, just like all of my other family members who have graduated in the past," Benzon said.
It was noted that both of Sophia's brothers were permitted to wear their lei at their graduation ceremonies. The woman in the sun hat then discovers she's being recorded and raises her hand. "You do not have my permission to videotape me," she said. Off camera, Benzon responded, "It doesn't matter because it's a public school."
The camera then panned over to a tearful Sophia, who was still wearing her pink and white floral lei. Kainoa states in the commentary for the video that after noticing Sophia was wearing a lei, the school even went so far as to prevent her from using her phone. Furthermore, he stated that they made her declare she would not be attending the wedding so she could call her parents.
She was supposedly confined in the gymnasium while the graduation was taking place, while she waited for her parents.
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