By: Toni Johnson
Clearly, the push to enforce the dress code more consistently and more harshly has been a rude awakening to students. With all of the new procedures and regulations that have been introduced this year, many are questioning how this change will affect our school? The dress code here at Spring Valley High School hasn’t changed since the school opened, but due to administration taking disciplinary action for dress code violations than last year students have voiced that now dress code is too strict and it has more “rules”than it once had.
“I think why the dress code is different because as much as I think everyone should be able to express themselves with clothing as freely as possible, there needs to be an end point to it,”sophomore Zohal Raouf said. Chaos reigned supreme last year, not only with dress code and enforcing school rules but also having to take on the challenge of Covid-19 and making an attempt to keep everyone safe. Administration would prefer if students focused more on their education rather than if the clothing a student chose to wear is school appropriate.
As seen on the internet in general, females that are seen frequently on social media wear more revealing clothing to places where it is not necessary or appropriate. So in taking the dress code more seriously this year, many female students feel that it is not fair compared to how lenient admin is when it comes to male students getting dress-coded. “ I definitely think admin is stricter on female students more than males because after all the havoc of last year and because of the more revealing clothing that they wear,” sophomore Zohal Raouf said.
“ I believe that dress code in general fixates more on what girls are wearing more than what boys are wearing, I think that when girls break the dress code it’s a lot more blatant and obvious. I think that is just how our brains are conditioned to believe, it’s not right but I think that is just our brains fixing things,” ninth grade English teacher Mrs.Anguiano said. Our administration is more demanding of females when it comes to how they dress for school.
With school just starting there came an unruly amount of dress codes that Mrs.Powell made a school-wide announcement. The clothing issue with studentsis slowly on the rise with new and different trends of clothing rising as well. “As style changes, the shirts get shorter and the shorts get shorter and the rips in the jeans get bigger, and now I think if we were lenient in the past it was because it wasn’t that bad, and now more kids are crossing the line” says ninth grade English teacher, Mrs.Anguiano. With school starting up again students have had to rewire their brains to not only get their sleep schedule back on track but back to thinking if the outfits they choose to wear are school appropriate.
Hypothetically speaking, if the school and/or district would allow us to change the standards for dress code, how would that change affect our school? “There would be a bunch of kids walking around wearing whatever they want, and sometimes it might not be something that should be worn at school,” said sophomore Lesley Rodriguez . Even though there are clothing and fashion trends on social media, some of the trends do not belong in a place where you are there to learn-not to socialize with your friends.
In summary, the Spring Valley High School dress code should be modernized and not completely changed. Again, with trends in the media constantly changing, it would benefit students if some of the rules that worked for those times adapted to the times we all are currently living in. Everyone in school should be able to express themselves through their clothing- but there needs to be a line that students should not be able to cross. Yes, it may seem unfair, but feminine clothing is completely different from typical clothing that is styled to be more masculine or gender non-conforming. Unfortunately, feminine clothing tends to be shorter and tighter fit while masculine clothing is looser and longer. That being because most masculine-presenting people don’t want to get dressed up as much as feminine-presenting people might. Plus, dressing up femininely is a lot more difficult due to all the limits on what female-presenting people can wear, for masculine-presenting people it seems a lot easier to dress up without many constraints.
