As students at a private school, we understand that we give up a majority of our rights. We also recognize that the administration allows us to keep some: we are not forced to wear uniforms, we can create clubs we are interested in, and we get entire days off to support our athletic teams when they participate in high-stake competitions. Sometimes, however, the administration makes unjustifiable alterations to our school codes. Their most recent blunder has been revising the yoga pants, leggings, and jeggings “code.”
In the Student Handbook, none of these three items are banned to begin with, and according to the same handbook, the rules it contains may only be altered when issues arise that are bad for the individual or the common good. What the formal student dress code says is that pants need to be above your hips: if my yoga pants always are, I fail to see a dress code infraction. Not only that, but since these items are not banned initially, I fail to see how students can be breaking a rule that doesn’t exist––or better yet, how the administration can “change” that “rule.”
Granted, on the very first page, the school includes the following paragraph to place qualifiers on every rule in the handbook: “The administration of the school reserves the right to interpret rules and policies of this handbook as individual situations and needs arise. Such interpretations will take into consideration the following two principles: all questionable and enabling behavior must be addressed and confronted for the good of the individual, and when there is a conflict of interest, the common good shall prevail.” Regardless, I have yet to see how wearing yoga pants, leggings, or jeggings affects the common good, or equates to “questionable and enabling behavior.” Therefore I only see this “adjusted rule” as complete bogus.
I believe that being expected to follow rules which benefit my well-being, or rules that are reasonable and justified, is completely understandable. If, however, the administration can change the student codes without justified reason, and expect me to simply follow them “because they say so,” any respect I once had for the rules is lost.
