Dress Code Essay

By Brent Hardy

            Khakis are just great.  Everywhere you look in the classroom, there is nothing but beautiful khaki pants.  Since the mandatory dress code went into effect, life has turned bland for students in Walker County Schools.  There should be no dress code in Walker County because it is entirely too costly, takes up too much time, and is a complete and total failure.

            The dress code was initiated in order to eliminate the differences between children with expensive, name-brand clothes and those without.  It was said to eliminate costs for clothes and reduce stress between “upper” and “lower” class kids.  This is utter lunacy.  The dress code ends up costing parents more because they have to buy school clothes on top of their children’s “street clothes,” and thus must buy twice as much.  It is also very difficult to find dress code approved items locally of late, especially for teenagers who are wearing adult clothes.  It is ridiculous to have to go to Birmingham just because your son or daughter tore their only pair of khaki pants on the way home.

            The dress code is also a failure in the classroom.  Instead of eliminating fights between students, it has not made any difference whatsoever.  If an intruder wishes to infiltrate a school, they only have to wear dress code approved clothes (if they make a trip to Birmingham to buy some!) into the building and most like go unnoticed.  Instead of helping, the dress code takes time away from classes for the teachers to make all their students stand up so they can check for miniscule, unimportant details such as if there is too much white on their shoes or if there are metal studs in their pants.  This is not fair to the students, who will be lacking in college because of not spending enough time on the curriculum, and on parents who are paying their tax dollars for the schools to teach their children, not monitor every tiny detail of their dress.

            The dress code is a magnanimous failure on the part of the Walker County Board of Education.  While a dress code that makes minor restrictions on types of dress for security and decency reasons is fair, such attention to the unimportant details is unreasonable, as well as ludicrous.  What good does it do a student to have to call his or her parents and go home just to change a shirt because it doesn’t have a collar when they should be learning algebra or history?  Cliques haven’t been eliminated, either.  No matter what you wear there will always be those who think that they are better than everyone else because they play football, or they are on the honor roll, or they just look better than others.  It’s not fair, but who says life should be?  Making everyone dress the same is certainly not the best way to cure the unfairness in the world.

            This just proves that the Board doesn’t have our best interests at heart.  Whether a parent who is paying a huge amount of money for clothes, not to mention tax money to fund a teacher’s inspection of their child’s clothes, or a student who feels just uncomfortable in their clothes and can’t grasp a subject because the teacher has to take time out of class to do a “dress code check.”  The bottom line is, we’re told to be individuals.  Would anyone like to tell me how to be an individual through uniformity?