A high-school student in Kerrville, Texas, about an hour northwest of San Antonio, was sent home Thursday after he showed up to first hour of classes with a haircut featuring the uncanny likeness of Texas A&M quarterback and Heisman Trophy hopeful Johnny Manziel.
The student, 17-year-old Christian Chavez, didn’t exactly charm his teachers at Hill Country High School with the haircut, though.
The school’s principal, Steve Schwarz, told Chavez to go home and stay there until the hair coloring subsided. He also called Irma Chavez, Christian’s mother.
“He let Christian go ahead and stay at the school as long as he was isolated from the other kids, because the other kids weren’t doing their work,” she explained, according to ABC.
“He was placed in an area of the school where he would not distract the learning of other students,” Jamie Falls, a spokesperson for the local district, told ABC. “He left school early, but it was on his own accord.”
As for Christian, he expressed disappointment that he was separated from his classmates. He also swore that he never meant to create such a frenzy of interest.
Falls noted that the school district maintains a dress code precisely to eliminate the kind of commotion caused by Chavez’s haircut.
“Hair must be clean and neatly groomed. Only natural hair colors are acceptable. Hairstyles that are distracting are not acceptable,” Falls explained in a statement concerning the dress code.
San Antonio barber Rob the Original was the artist behind the scissors, and Chavez’s hair sculpture was far from his first.
“The boundaries of normal barbers do not apply to Rob,” his website declares confidently, noting that this work has appeared on Fox Sports Nation, Yahoo.com and ESPN.
The extravagant hairstyle was created in a two-hour ordeal that included makeup to make Manziel’s mug look more realistic on the back of Chavez’s head.
Chavez told ABC News that he slept on his face — Chavez’s, not Manziel’s – the night before his big reveal at school on Thursday.
On Friday, Chavez went back to school with his coiffure still intact. As a result, he was once again segregated in a room away from his peers.
