Dress Code at ACHS
My alma mater, Atlantic City High School, will begin the 2007-2008 school year with a dress code. According to an article in South Jersey.com:
The upcoming school year will start a new mandatory high school uniform policy. The policy bans students favorites, jeans, t-shirts, and hoodies. The uniform consists of plain polo shirts, only white, navy, or black, and only black, navy, or khaki color dress pants or skirts. The ACHS school logo is the only logo allowed on clothing.
As someone who grew up during the “Age of Aquarius,” I find that rather ironic. My generation of ACHS students (Class of 1971) was one of the first that was allowed to wear jeans to high school. I remember a favorite pair of mustard bell-bottoms that I wore often. The hair on male students was often long, big Afros were popular with African-American students and the only time I had to wear a skirt was when I played basketball.
Talk about ironic; while some other girls’ teams were wearing shorts and T-shirts, we were stuck with ancient-looking jumpers with navy bloomers underneath. Of course we didn’t get to play other schools until 1969-70, and we were still using girls rules that season. The next year it was five on five and everyone was allowed to cross the center line.
But I digress. My high school years were a volatile time in our nation, with the student protests against the war, my 18-year-old male classmates having to worry about being drafted into the military, the fight for equality for black Americans. There was no way they were going to make us conform to a uniform during the revolution. We needed to express our individuality.
Is it any different for today’s students? I doubt it. While one can understand the need for a uniform code in military schools and even Catholic institutions (I’m not convinced about the latter), a public school should still stand for freedom of expression. Clothing is a big part of that expression.
Just a thought.
Go here for the article on ACHS in South Jersey.com and here for the school Web site.