Thoughts...?

To begin, I teach at a Catholic high school.  The students have to wear uniforms everyday except for Fridays and other special days.  Overall, the school is great, but very conservative.  A mom called me an atheist and an Obama supporter in one accusation!!

Tonight, at our usual Tuesday night dinner, I started talking about an incident at school involving dress code, a detention, and making a student change his shirt.  Immediately everyone jumps on me for being a mean teacher!  Now maybe they were siding with my grandmother, who thinks and tells everyone that I am the meanest teacher in the world, to earn brownie points.  But here is the situation and then I would like to hear your thoughts--am I a mean teacher or did the family jump on the black sheep once again?!?

This student likes to push the limits.  He is nice, but a does not like to follow any rules.  Previous examples, when he was on Academic Probation he had to meet with all of his teachers once a week to catch up.  He never showed up once, and every teacher arranged his/her schedule to accommodate for him.  He asked me if he could have my cell phone number and we can meet at a Starbucks one Saturday to study.  And his school polo was never tucked in (dress code violation) and had multiple warnings and detentions for that as well.

 Today was one of the days when the kids were allowed to wear jeans and a green top if they donated money to a charity.  This student comes to school in jeans and a Pabst Blue Ribbon St. Patty's Day shirt. (For those who do not know, PBR is a cheap, nasty beer.) For violating school policy,  I wrote him a detention slip and asked the Dean of Students to make him cover up his shirt somehow.  Now, was I a mean teacher by punishing a student who wore a beer t-shirt to a Catholic high school?!?!

Thoughts...?