Editorial: Dress Code Corruption Alec and Emily

A popular issue in today’s public schools is the dress code. This is the one issue that school administrations, students, and parents cannot come to an equal agreement about. Schools claim modesty, students claim self-expression, and parents seem to divide between the two. Schools state “their school, their rules” while students claim their tax paying family should have the final say.

Many schools deny that their dress code is based on the fact that certain revealing items can be “distracting to other students”. Despite their denial most people know that schools think that way and that they genuinely feel that a girl exposing her shoulder by wearing a tank top is distracting to the school environment when it truly has nothing to do with school. Many school officials come up with ridiculous reasons for why their dress codes are so harsh but it all comes down to the fact that many administrators don’t like students being able to express themselves and attempt to force them to not be who they are. Whether they like to admit it or not, school administrators are enforcing ridiculous dress codes that have nothing to do with school at all.

Through the dress code students are looking to express themselves and fit in. Students are not coming to school dressing the way that they do because they want to stop other from learning. The two factors do not coincide what so ever. School is a place for children to be themselves and strive to be the best they can be in their own manner. If schools are denying them the right to be themselves with something as little as a revealed shoulder or sarcastic print, what else are they restricting? Another issue is the School’s temperature. Students spend a large part of their year in school so they dress accordingly to the weather. Some schools fail to provide a cool environment during the spring/summer months and students are still forced to abide by the dress code, dress codes that leave them feeling uncomfortably warm. There’s larger issues at hand than a student being “distracted” from learning.

The only answer to dress code issues in schools is to either provide an environment where the students can where clothes that are deemed “appropriate” by the school, or to allow students to wear what they want. Obviously shirts that expose a person’s entire stomach are not appropriate for any situation dealing with school but most shirts worn by students aren’t inappropriate in any way. What it comes down to is that schools have no right to tell their students how to dress if they can’t even make it so that their students are comfortable in the school.