The recent issues at Kentucky’s Woodford County High School has sparked some radical arguments between both parents and students. This disruption has influenced me to ask, "why do public schools even have a “dress code”"?
I had a uniform in both middle and high school. We had the option to wear three colors of polo shirts, they had to have four buttons and two of them had to be done. We could choose between navy or khaki pants and we could only wear skirts if we had special permission for religious reasons. We couldn’t wear boots, heels or sandals. If we wanted to wear a jacket, it had to be a solid color sweatshirt, no hood or pocket.
While I hated wearing my school’s dress code, in hindsight it did make dressing for school a lot easier and buying clothes was not nearly as big a struggle. However, when people asked why the school had such a dress code, the answer was always “to avoid classicism”. I disagreed with this fervently. Are we actually able to avoid discrimination of class systems? Do high school teens really care whether or not you are wearing Hollister or Walmart? Or is there a deeper reason to dress codes? Some faculty members may insist that uniforms are a way to enforce appropriate dressing for school. I understand this. I personally do not ever want to see a woman’s cleavage, or a man’s underwear. I do not want to see butt crack, nipple or anything else that should generally be covered up. I find it not only distracting, but disgusting. I think people should respect themselves more and dress appropriately because they want to, not because they have to. But to do that, teens need a role model to show them what is publicly respectable and what is not. But I digress.
If the reason is to keep teens appropriately dressed in school, why not just have an enforced code? No tank tops, daisy duke shorts, etc. An actual uniform is not required to have properly dressed students. Rules that are equally enforced between all students by all faculty members should be enough. I stress equally enforced because I was one of those students who had figured out how to traverse around school out of uniform, without getting into trouble. I was a polite kid, who made good grades and occasionally brought teachers a Frosty from Wendy’s. Looking back though, I realize it was not fair for me to get away with disobeying the rules.
So what is the point of a dress code? If faculty is going to pick and choose how and who they enforce the rules upon, why have one at all? If it is to keep teens from bullying each other about their clothes, why not mandate that all clothes be bought from the same place? Or, as the Woodford County High School suggested, if the reason behind the dress code is to lessen available distractions for male students, why not require classes to be separated by gender? The point I am trying to make is; none of these options are reasonable. A dress code in a public school is not plausible without strict enforcement and clearly established rules. Until these issues are fixed, there is no point to a dress code.
