Pushback against dress code enforcement.

By: Mae Reese

Upon the return of in-person classes, many students have noticed an increase in the enforcement of the dress code. Within the first couple of days of the semester, multiple students were dress coded, causing unrest among the student body.

In an effort to push back against the recent enforcement of the dress code, an in-school protest was organized by various students that spread overnight through social media. The movement, later termed the “dress code protest,” took place on Sept. 7.

The protest comprised both female and male students (mainly upperclassmen) showing up to school in clothing items that deliberately went against the dress code. Caleb Huebner, an AHS senior who participated in the protest says, “I think the reason that the dress code enforcement is more controversial this year compared to other years is because even though we have had a dress code in the past, it has never been enforced to this extent, which caught a lot of students off guard.”

On the day of the protest, Huebner was one of many students who were called into Assistant Principal John Rogers’ office to be dress-coded and asked to change. During an interview regarding the dress code, Huebner says, “I do feel that some aspects of the dress code should be upheld, however not to the extreme extent that it has been this year.” Some students share this point of view while others believe that the dress code should be abolished completely.

When asked about the idea of abolishing the dress code, Principal Chad Springer says, “If we just get rid of the dress code, there are certain societal norms that we agree should not be allowed in school--the swastika, hate symbols, things like that, not allowing those in school is court case [precedent]. These aspects of the dress code are implemented for safety and security. We don’t want people wearing hate symbols so it can't be an all or nothing type thing with the dress code.”

Huebner says that since the protest, he’s noticed a decrease in people getting dress-coded despite there being about the same amount of people wearing clothes that break the dress code.

This suggests that the protest might have had some effect on the dress code enforcement. On the other hand, Springer says regarding the dress code protest, that we must “agree to disagree.”