Students show examples of dress code violations. Photo Illustration by Ilaf Esuf
Facebook statuses, tweets and Tumblr posts filled with rage, anger and frustration regarding the administration’s dress code emails flooded everyone’s computer screens three days before the start of school. However, according to school administration, they are not new at all and are enforced the same way as well.
“We use the same techniques that we have in the past and that is to go out to each of the classrooms, this year it’s social studies that we are visiting, and to provide information to students and staff and parents through email and Edline and to try to make sure that everyone is aware (of the rules),” assistant principal, Mrs. Sherry Mauser said.
However, students who have been sent to the office multiple times beg to differ. Some students claim that the clothes they wore last year are now dubbed inappropriate by this year’s standards.With only a three-day notice, many students were unable to make new purchases that fit the dress code. Even if more time was given, many parents refused to spend additional money on new school clothes.
“I really just want to wear what I have because my parents won’t buy me new clothes. It’s what we have and a lot of parents have already complained about it because a lot of their kids have bought new clothes for school and they sent the email two days before school started,” senior Christine Phan said.
However, students fail to realize that these dress-code regulations are not selective to our school. On the contrary, they are provided by the Rocklin Unified School District, which get their rules from the Board of Education, and are expected to be enforced by each administration. Reasons behind the dress-code policy include professionalism and a decrease in work distraction.
“I believe that your attire sets the tone for your business for the day. So when you are more appropriately attired or more seriously attired, it does help you to be a little bit more serious in your manner and I do think that it helps. It creates less distractions and it is much easier than having to tug on shorts or skirts or straps which really is or can be distracting,” Mauser said.
This particular dress code has been strictly enforced in neighboring schools such as Rocklin High School. They have not been able to wear flip-flops, shorts above their fingertips, or tank tops, for quite some time. The stricter enforcement of these rules on campus have sparked great rebellion among students, some of whom are willing to sign petitions to prove a point.
“I plan on rebelling 100 percent (even if) that means writing up a petition like I did last year,” junior Russel Drumright said.
Other students have also attempted to test the waters with the dress code. Phan, along with her friend Maryelle Mayo conducted an experiment to test the administration’s enforcement of these rules they found to be frustrating. While Phan was sent to the office three days in a row during the first week of school for the clothes she wore, Mayo, who swapped outfits with Phan, purposefully tried to draw attention from the administration while wearing Phan’s supposedly inappropriate clothing. Her attempts at getting caught went unnoticed; Mayo passed through the day without a dress code violation whereas Phan received three.
“I think they’re just trying to make us look more decent but there are a lot of girls who don’t look decent anyway and I don’t know why. There are a lot of girls wearing short skirts that show their butt cheeks and tank tops but they never get in trouble. It really makes me angry because I wear t-shirts and I get in trouble,” Phan said.
With a larger campus, administrators are trying their best to enforce the rules as fairly as possible, giving students warnings and opportunities to change before being forced to call parents.
“At that point (after they’ve been told to change) if they continue, and we’ve talked with their parents, they’ve received detention time, then we would have a meeting with the parents and from that point it would be defiance if they continue to wear things that were very much out of dress code,” Mauser said.
She advises students that school appropriate attire is in fact out there. “You just have to pay attention to which ones you are purchasing and that they have a long enough in-seam. It just takes a little more thought into what you’re doing to make those purchases that I haven’t been to any stores yet that haven’t had school appropriate attire, you just have to look for it.”
By ILAF ESUF and EMMA RICHIE
