<p>I'm a member of my school's student senate (which is basically the equivalent of class president/student council if you have those), and unlike the groups in most schools, we have a decent amount of influence in school rules and events. Today, the principal wanted to meet with us about some changes he wanted to make to the dress code. It's fairly lenient, just with your standard rules about length of shorts, etc.</p>
<p>He said something along the lines of "I know this is going to sound blunt, but the girls at this school are dressing like wh*res." He then showed us some emails from concerned parents that were worried about the image people were creating for the school- we are a fairly prominent private school in the area that is heavily dependent on the donations of students' parents, so naturally the principal was upset that parents were getting angry. Personally, I felt that his word choice was very rude, unprofessional, and kind of creepy considering he as a grown man was making this assessment about teenage girls. Not to mention I hate that we're openly conforming to the whole "You say jump, I say how high does your checkbook go" idea.</p>
<p>Other members of senate disagreed with me, and thought that something harsh like that would be effective as far as guilting the student body into paying closer attention to the dress code guidelines. It was also proposed that those angry parent emails should be presented to everyone to let them know how that their dress code violations hadn't gone unnoticed. Someone suggested using some sort of scarlet letter tactic to mark people not following the dress code, like making them wear lab coats all day.</p>
<p>I was just curious what others thought about these suggestions and how you'd go about resolving the issue.</p>
<p>I go to public school and it’s kind of a hard thing to determine. I really don’t like having to look at my classmates who wear stilettos and short shorts all day, I think it’s distracting and inappropriate. </p>
<p>I don’t know about your school but my school has about 1700 kids so it’s hard to enforce it with everyone. Every single teacher would have to agree to go along with it to uphold it as well. As far as discipline goes, I think the student should either be sent home or be made to wear a lab coat or something like that. Here, most people don’t get in trouble for dress code at all (hard to enforce) but when it does happen you have to put on a really big old school t-shirt for the rest of the day. </p>
<p>I think a lot of administrators are worried about how they would enforce it because it could easily turn into tenth grade girls turning on them and accusing them of checking them out or being inappropriate. At least I would imagine… it happens. </p>
<p>Having class meetings to talk about the e-mails would be good too. Just to show them what the rest of the community thinks. I actually think that’s the best idea. That would have the most impact, and hope that it trickles down. </p>
<p>Private schools that do have strict dress codes I think have to be pretty darn strict for anything to actually be enforced. It’s always beyond short shorts and tank tops. So far as, no shirts with logos on them, no wacky hair colors, no high heels… The private christian school down the street from me is like that. It’s christian so that has something to do with it but if the restrictions are serious, then so are the results, so I guess you just have to decide if you want to ask the student body to give up a lot of their autonomy as far as self expression goes to save your reputations?</p>