The week after Homecoming, the administration banned the junior’s “Nynasty” hand symbol. “It was banned because it’s offensive to other people,” Assistant Principal Phil Winston said. “We’re trying to look out for everyone’s best interests and we’re making sure that people won’t use offensive gestures.”

The Nynasty sign is based on “Dynasty,” a group of rap artists who coined hand symbol with two hands together forming a diamond.

“It originated as Dynasty,” junior Nathan Ma said. “We found the symbol when famous athletes as well as rappers started using it. It’s a symbol of power. We started throwing it [the symbol] up at the end of last year’s boys’ JV basketball season and it sort of spread on from there.”

The administration, however, believes that Gunn students appropriated the sign. “We believe that Dynasty is the root of it, and a hand symbol was eventually attached to it,” Winston said. “It can mean ‘vagina’ and people were using it inappropriately. Parents, staff and student all expressed concern.”

However, Ma thought it was strange that people would find it inappropriate. “The Dynasty symbol is a diamond shape,” he said. “It’s only dirty if it is flipped upside down and many people got the wrong impression.”

The administration implemented the ban because of people’s reactions to the symbol. “This is all about perception,” Winston said. “If it’s perceived by people as something offensive, it’s the administrator’s job to step in and do something about it.”

Principal Noreen Likins agreed. “There are people who have come to me and asked why we allow it on campus,” she said. “It can be used as an insult or an alternative to the finger. Many found it inappropriate.”

The administrators decided to implement the ban after they discussed the hand symbol at their weekly meeting the Monday after Homecoming week.

“We’re not going to let a small group ruin the environment at the school,” Winston said. “Gunn’s a good place to be.”

Likins agreed. There were only a few people who were using the symbol in a derogatory way, Likins said, but the school has the responsibility to act if students and staff feel offended.

It’s hard to decide if the group that spread the symbol is guilty or not, Winston said, because its true intentions in creating the symbol are unknown.

Winston said most students did not react against the ban. “I didn’t get much pushback about it,” Winston said.

Some students, like junior Molly Barnes, do not support the ban. “[The sign] didn’t really mean anything,” she said. “It’s just a sign that famous people use occasionally. I think that the administration took it a little far. The seniors were doing things that were a lot worse.”

Ma said that it unified the juniors during Homecoming. “It definitely brought our class together,” he said. “It made this year’s [Homecoming] better.”

Senior Olympian Editor-in-Chief Michael Wong is concerned about the ban because it extends to publications, including the yearbook. “It’s a good idea if it’s offending people, but it should be allowed in publications,” he said. “It’s a part of history. Think of how screwed history would be if it only recorded pleasant and non-offensive things.”

Wong is currently working with the administration. “We got a lot of pictures with ‘Nynasty’ in it,” he said. “It was the juniors’ way of showing their competitive spirit. I saw it all over the place and some of [the pictures] were quite good.”

Barnes, the Assistant Editor of the yearbook, is also concerned about the banned pictures since it affects the Homecoming section. “I was actually taking pictures on the night [of the rally],” she said. “We have about two pictures out of one hundred pictures of the juniors that don’t have the Dynasty sign in it.”