Do you know if this would include facial hair?

I ask because my half-Persian son usually sports a neatly trimmed beard. He sees his beard as part of his Iranian identity. Recently, he was forced to shave it off by his EMT class director for the community college – even though the county EMS for which he's taking the class had already fit-tested him and cleared him on all counts for work.

He was devastated. He kept saying he couln't even claim to be Persian any more. I knew he was very proud of his thick, lucious bear; but, I honestly didn't realize how much he identified that beard with being Persian. I do know I felt the class was assaulting his self-image because your face is the image you present to the world – especially at only 18. He also felt the beard gave him the appearance of maturity to be trusted by patients. Without it, he said, he looks like a "pimply-faced teenager – and how's an emergency patient going to trust a baby-face out of a boo-boo bus."

"Boo-boo bus" is what he and his EMS cohort call ambulances.