School Bans Bracelet Used in Sex Game

DENVER — A Colorado middle school is asking parents not to allow their children to wear a type of colored bracelet to school over concerns that the bracelets hold specific sexual connotations for students.

Mike Medina, the principal of Angevine Middle School in Lafayette, near Boulder, sent an e-mail message to parents on Thursday warning them about the “jelly” bracelets, whose colors are said to indicate a level of sexual activity that a student has either experienced or is willing to engage in, said Briggs Gamblin, a spokesman for the Boulder Valley School District.

Mr. Gamblin said school staff members had picked up on conversations students were having about the bracelets, which have become increasingly popular this year, and brought the matter to Mr. Medina’s attention. The principal then met with a number of students and concluded that the bracelets had become enough of a distraction through classroom and hallway conversations to warrant the e-mail message.

“It’s turned out that a lot of the kids, especially the girls, wear them as fashion statements,” Mr. Gamblin said, “and some were adamant they didn’t have any connotation.”

But, he said, other students had discovered through the Internet a game called “snap,” in which the color of the bracelet denotes willingness in engage in a particular sexual activity. When a boy snaps the bracelet off a girl, that activity is ostensibly supposed to take place.

The rubbery bracelets look like the sort that became popular during the ’80s. But over the past few years, some schools across the country have banned them amid fears that they have become synonymous with sex. Indeed, myriad jelly- or sex-bracelet Web sites refer to the game snap, with some sites even providing color guides. Full Article