School Dress Codes

A common plague affecting schools across America is the dress code, and dress codes should be removed from American Schools because they restrict personal freedom, including symbolic speech; they disrupt class; they are more effort than they’re worth to enforce; and they send mixed messages about the body. First, dress codes restrict personal freedom. A dress code by definition limits clothes that an individual can wear to school. Sometimes, it is reasonable; you shouldn’t wear a bikini to school, but sometimes the restrictions are arbitrary and can end up restricting freedom of speech, specifically symbolic speech. For example, a school in Tennessee told a girl she couldn’t wear a shirt with a pro-LGBTQ+ message on it. In the past, the Supreme …show more content…
Many people acknowledge that having a dress code and removing students who aren’t following it is a big distraction, but some schools argue that there is one bigger distraction that having a dress code remedies. That distraction? Female skin. Most school dress codes force women to cover their skin so that boys don’t get distracted. That is clearly bull crap. Women shouldn’t be forced to change what they wear because boys get distracted. Honestly, are boys distracted when they see a girl wearing leggings? Probably not. While I can see some reasonable limitations; you probably shouldn’t wear a bikini to school, most limitations placed on women by dress codes aren’t reasonable. Let’s start with the three fingers on the shoulder rule. What is so distracting about a woman’s shoulder? As a resident male myself, I have not been distracted simply because a woman was wearing a shirt that didn’t cover all of her shoulder. The fingertip rule with shorts is equally stupid. Yes, women have legs. They are meant for walking, not distracting, and we all know that. While obvious areas should certainly be covered up, I don’t believe that there is an argument about that, the fingertip rule might be a little much. There are more restrictions that I could go on and on about the impracticality and stupid reasons that these rules exist, but there is a bigger point here, the results of these rules. Having rules that restrict the …show more content…
Earlier in this paper, I explained the drawbacks of having a dress code compared to the limited benefits that they offer. I decided to talk to some MVS faculty about what they had to say about dress code. At MVS, while a dress code, it isn’t truly enforced. For example, if a teacher sees someone out of dress code, they will simply point it out and ask the student not to wear that particular article of clothing again. If the student wears that same article again and it is noticed, then further consequences will be taken, however that is an extreme that, to my knowledge, rarely happens. When asked if having teachers or faculty go around the school and make sure dress code is enforced and then making students out of dress code change or be punished in a similar manner would be worth the effort, Mrs. Kissinger said that she didn’t believe that it would be productive. When asked if she personally agreed with all the restrictions, she said that she didn’t agree with some restrictions, and for example, she said that there would be nothing wrong, in her eyes, with gentlemen wearing T-Shirts. She also added that we, as a school community, should fix our dress code, and once that happens, we should make sure that the dress code is enforced. When asked the same questions, Mr. Fout said that teachers have better things to do with their time than catching students out of dress code. He also said that not all dress code