This article examines the series of court cases from 1965 to 1975 that advocated for freedom of expression for high school students, specifically that of appearance. Graham primarily focuses on the events of the Karr v. Schmidt case and how the legal challenges of control over haircuts affected students’ rights to free speech. She repeatedly brings up the school policies and how school faculty members would defend them to preserve a, “status quo,” many of which may seem ridiculous by today's standards. One interesting example was that the extreme enforcement over personal appearance stemmed from an effort to make lower class students assimilate into a middle class culture and to prevent middle class students from adopting lower class looks
