Recently at Ridgeview High School the student dress code has changed to become considerably more strict. In fact, when it comes to the girl’s on campus I personally think that when school staff enforces the dress code it targets mainly the girl’s. Recently there has been a petition for the girl’s dress code to change to show enforcement equally. According to students on campus some of their parents are starting to complain. I feel that security prioritizes girl’s with spaghetti straps, without straps, or those who show too much stomach. This school year it feels as if girl’s get pulled aside more often for something minor. While the boy’s on campus can walk around with low-hanging pants or shorts and graphic tees displaying things like Cookies, or various other things that violate campus expectations.
Recently, I sat down with one Ridgeview High’s Dean of Students Shannon Barnes, who explained in a brief interview that the security at Ridgeview High School follows the Kern High School District prescribed rules on attire. She expressed, “All students are supposed to be covered from left armpit to right all the way down to their knees.” This is regular school district protocall and any student who does not follow this, is technically violating the attire regulations and is supposed to be dress coded. Barnes continues to say, “For me the biggest thing is anything with drugs like Cookies, etc. For the ladies we were seeing a lot of no straps at all.” She then described, “Someone can just grab that shirt and pull it down.” Also adding, “It’s not like it’s unique to our school, every school has the same standard.” She goes on to tell me that out of the many students on campus every day, they have 195 kids failing to follow the dress regulations and some even have failed more than once. There is a consequence if you do get dress coded more than once though. There are seven steps that the Dean’s office follows in this protocol. First step is that students are required to change their clothes. To the last step that is on campus intervention.
With these consequences in place, I still believe that staff/security needs to implement the dress code policy equally on campus or don’t enforce a dress code at all. It’s unfair to the students on campus if the rules don’t apply to everyone. Personally, I feel as though certain dress code rules are unrealistic. When it comes time for warmer weather especially with our hot summers, it is unreasonable to cover up to the extent that the dress code requires. It’s understandable if they’re showing a lot more, but I feel that changes need to be made to the dress code.
