Dress Code: To be or not to be???

Here's that opinion article I mentioned earlier, but first the nutshell version of the story with the administration.
I wrote an article about the school dress code, after interviewing the principle and several others around the school. We didn't run the article by them before publishing (like we usually have to if we dis the school in any way). We (the awesome Miss Baker and I) gave the principal a copy to read, but he was in a meeting so we left it on his desk. Twenty minutes later, he comes in with the VP upset that I "misrepresented the student body" and "The dress code problem is only an issue with a handful of students". . . . . and all that jazz. Although I see his point, its an issue that need more attention than its getting, so being the kind of girl I am, gave it some much needed attention. Here's the article (Now keep in mind, I know its not perfect, but I put it together kinda quick):

Dress Code : It’s More Than Just How You Look

By Audrey Miller

Do you remember when you were little and you misbehaved, your mom would threaten to send you to your room, and then she never did? From these empty threats, you learned how to push the rules without ever getting in trouble. Like a young child, PHS has pushed their boundaries to extreme limits when it comes to following the district dress code.

Going down any given PHS hall, you could expect not only to find kids hurrying to class, but also find short shorts, girls with their tops hanging out, plenty of hats and several face piercings. This kind of dress is okay for a mall or other social area, but not appropriate for a learning environment such as a high school. As of August 2009, the Nebo School Dress Code clearly states that “hair shall be neat… The coloring of hair with unnatural looking colors to include costume spray will not be tolerated…Modesty shall include covering shoulders, midriff and back. Short shorts, biking shorts, tank tops, halter or crop tops, extremely short skirts or dresses do not meet the modesty standards in our schools…Hats and caps shall not be worn during school hours.” It’s no secret that PHS isn’t doing their best in this area. In fact, as a student body, we’ve slacked off so much that it’s now a problem. As a kid I was once told “You only perform as well as you dress. If you show up looking like a slacker, than that’s how you will perform.” This statement holds true to our school as well.

The way we dress not only reflects upon our GPA’s but also on other areas in our school. When you come to school with blue hair and a nose ring it’s distracting to those around you, and it affects their attitudes toward having Payson pride. Really, who wants to have pride in a school that doesn’t have pride in itself? With pride in their school lacking, little by little, students loose the want to show up to class and begin to sluff more often, therefore also affecting our attendance policy. We all hate the bagging on us that we get from Salem kids about how their school is bigger and better or whatever, but if we don’t have enough pride to even show up to class, I pose the question, can we blame them? I In a recent interview with Mr. Peery he said, “Even if students are dressed against the dress code, at least they are here learning. By suspending them or something like that, you are defeating the purpose of learning and rewarding bad behavior.” While I agree that students need to be here learning, I purpose that the dress code problem is actually hurting our overall attendance.

PHS junior, Laura Wear had this to say about the dress code, “It’s like people don’t have confidence in the administration or the teachers because they often don’t enforce the policies, so when teachers do try to enforce policies the students don’t respect their authority. It’s not just a problem with the teachers, it’s the students who break the rules, but the dress code should definitely be more strictly enforced” To get the other side of this opinion, I questioned Mr. Peery about dress code enforcement. “We do try our best to enforce the dress code. Ms. Maria Zambrano helps us a lot by bring girls dressed inappropriately to the office and helping them either find something else to wear or arrange someone to bring them something else from home. Things like hats are a little harder to enforce, as an administration, if we see kids in the hall with hats on we ask them to take them off, and they usually do until we turn the corner and then they put them back on,” he said. This kind of behavior told by both Wear and Perry is absolutely unacceptable. Not only are students disrespecting themselves through the dress code violations, but are also robbing their superiors of the respect they rightfully deserve. Believe it or not, high schoolers aren’t as big and bad as they’d all like to think they are. When you are on school property, you are subject to the faculty. Come on Payson, show some respect!

To help this problem, Nebo School District recently modified the dress code to now include a clause about girls’ tops and cleavage, and all of the facial hair changes. Although Mr. Peery had hopes to enforce this policy more fully in the future, it’s going to take the individual effort of each student and faculty member to really get our school back to where it should be. I encourage you all to take more pride in yourselves and in our school, and to put in the extra effort to double check how you look before coming to school in the morning. With the help of everyone, Payson High will be back on top!

Okay so reading this again, I realize that there are some huge errors (I only had the RD on my flash drive), but hopefully you still get the point. In my opinion, a rule that isn't enforced shouldn't be a rule; therefore, ENFORCE THE STUPID DRESS CODE OR GET RID OF IT! Rules with no support teach teens that life doesn't have consequences, now is that the message principals really want to be sending??? hmmmmmm Anyways, things got straightened out with the Admin, and both the staff and the admin have learned somethings we will take into consideration in future publications.