The Mycenaean

I understand that a dress code is necessary to provide an environment conducive to the students’ learning, but I believe that our school’s strict dress code may be becoming more of a hindrance than a help.

With girls being forced to call home for a change of clothes, and boys yanking up their pants to prevent “sagging” every day, the dress code is being violated every single day, despite the strict rules put before us.  I believe that a dress code with less strict rules would be much more supportive to our school’s success.

According to the LRHS student handbook, the dress code is issued in order to “[n]ot distract the attention of students or staff from their work.”  I know that I’m not distracted by the sagging of pants, so I assume this is mostly directed towards boys being distracted by the inappropriate dress of their female counterparts.

If I were a male, I would be insulted by the amount of misunderstanding that the administration has for the boys at this school.  Sure, they’re hormonal teenagers, but it is ridiculous to think that a girl with a bra strap showing would prevent a boy from focusing on their school work.

This is a complete understatement of the male self control. “It’s nice when girls wear revealing clothing and all, but I won’t be looking at girls all through class because I know that I need to learn the stuff,” said Griffin Parks, freshman.

The administrators should keep in mind that most boys know what’s important, and if girls are distracting enough to take a boy’s attention off their school work, then the student is obviously not focused enough in the first place.

When the dress code says that the rules are in order to prevent distraction, then the rule should apply to all distractions.  Tattoos and body piercings are much more distracting then short skirts and sagging pants but they are allowed.

It’s not that I don’t believe in the right to tattoo/pierce one’s ski because I’m all for free expression, but choice of clothing is a way to express yourself as well, and by limiting the clothes that we are allowed to wear our free expression is limited.

If the administration is willing to diminish one form of our free expression in order to prevent distraction, then why are tattoos and body piercings common occurrences?

Along with tattoos and piercings, many other clothing items can cause disruption in the schools. The things that distract me in class do not consist of the shortness of a girl’s skirt or sagging of a boy’s pants, but the girls that wear four inch sparkly heels, that click and clack across the classroom floors, or the boys that have gages in their ears that appear as if you could stick a ruler through them. Therefore using “distraction” as the reason for such a strict dress code is not a valid reason.

Another fault is that our school’s dress code lacks fairness. Human beings come in all shapes in sizes, with all kinds of lengths and shapes.  “I could wear a decent skirt, but I have long arms so my finger tips reach farther along my thigh than most girls’ hands do,” said Noel Hilyer, sophomore.

It is far from fair that our school bases the dress code on an aspect relating to people’s size and not the length of the skirt.

”The dress code isn’t fair. I’m tall, so shorts and skirts appear a lot shorter on me because I have long legs. The dress code needs to penalize short girls in short skirts too,” said Maria Cain, sophomore.  Perhaps if the rules were edited to accommodate students of different shapes and sizes, then students would be much happier with our dress code.

One of the most important disadvantages of the LRHS dress code is the amount of distraction that is caused due to the students’ attempts to follow it. When students walk through the halls wearing a dress code violation, avoiding consequence is a top priority.  Unfortunately, sometimes students are forced to take alternate routes to avoid the eye of some of the top dress code enforcers, which could mean being late to class, causing consequences for the student and distractions to the other students in the class.

Along with the administration, teachers are also out to enforce the dress code amongst their students. One of the most common ways that the teacher enforces these rules is by politely “asking” a female student to pull up their shirt in order to prevent the showing of cleavage.

This ends up becoming more of a distraction from school work than a help, because when a girl is wearing a top slightly against the dress code, they focus more in class on not getting caught than completing their school work.  When having to keep a constant watch on where the teacher is looking in order to be able to pull up your shirt just in the nick of time, focus on the topic is no easy task.

Our school needs a dress code that is more accepted by the student body and easier for the student body to follow. At a Christian camp I attended this summer, the dress code consisted of this catchy rhyme: “Reach for the sky and touch your toes, if anything shows then it doesn’t go.”

This would be a much more effective way to moniter the student’s dress because it would prevent student’s from wearing clothes that show inappropriate parts but it would definitely lighten the stress of maintaining dress code appropriate dress. I’m sure that many students agree that the dress code has gone too far and that a change in the rules would be welcome.