Check out Face off: Dress code too lenient to hear the other side of the story.
Self-expression is defined as expression of one’s own personality, feelings or ideas, as through speech or art. LHS is a school filled with many types of people. There are the skaters, cheerleaders, band geeks, jocks, scene kids and the rest of us who are not defined by some social status. Each one of us should be allowed to represent ourselves. The dress code is too stringent.
Although, compared to many schools across the nation, LHS has more lenient requirements for school attire, some teachers’ interpretations of these requirements affect students’ freedoms of self-expression. The teacher has more authority, and the student must comply or be punished.
Teachers might use safety as an excuse to replace clothes they find offensive. The reasoning behind the safety excuse is that someone wearing a chain might attack another student with it, and a student wearing a trench coat could more easily conceal a weapon. Yet, if a student really wanted to harm somebody, he or she could use a pencil as a weapon. And as for trench coats, what could a student hide in a coat that they could not hide in a backpack?
To teachers who say students’ clothing creates too much attention, maybe students just want to stand out. Not everyone wants to be part of superficial cliques or meet the ‘normal’ standard. Some of us wish to break away instead of converting into another mindless clone. There needs to be boundaries, but boundaries also can discourage people from really showing who they are.
Everyone should have the right to feel comfortable at school. Modesty is vital to meeting this goal of creating a respectable environment for students and teachers. Some girls, unless they literally wore a T-shirt everyday, cannot help but show the slightest amount of cleavage. Instead of the administration acting ashamed of a women’s body, calling it immodest, they should look at how the girl carries herself.
I am not promoting the use of hate messages or flesh revealing clothes. I am saying that teachers should balance their perceptions of the school rules with a student’s right to self expression.
