American Notes TEXAS

When antiwar activists look at an inverted Y inside a circle, they see a symbol for peace. But some school officials in Pasadena, Texas, detect something satanic: an upside-down broken cross that signifies the defeat of Christianity. This week they will vote on a new student dress code that would allow principals to outlaw the sign.

School administrators learned the symbol's devilish significance at a seminar on cults conducted last spring at the University of Houston. (The peace sign was devised by British pacifists who combined the semaphore signs for N and D, standing for nuclear disarmament.) The proposed ban has drawn some wry comments from students. Quipped a twelve-year-old: "If they ban peace symbols, they'll have to ban basic geometry because of all its lines and circles."