As the weather gets warmer and summer gets near, the dress code will be enforced more. Some of the things students wear will be “inappropriate” for school. Dress code may not be fair, but some teachers think it is important what students wear so others don’t get “distracted”.

At Lakeland High School the dress code is important to some staff, but others don’t really care. Mr. Ryan said, ”I would appreciate it if people would be dressed”. Some students may think it is unfair and some students think that it may be directed towards girls.

The dress code at Lakeland has rules and guidelines in the student handbook. “Shirts should cover the stomach area at all times even when raising arms”. This is hard for most people at school, mostly for girls. This is a rule that is directed to girls and most students know what clothing is too revealing.  Also there are very few shirts that cover your stomach area when you lift your arms up. It is hot in the warmer months and if you have a really long shirt on you may be hotter.  

Having fingertip length shorts, skirts and dresses is also a part of the school dress code. Fingertip length shorts for anyone over 5ft. 5in. tall is hard to find. For taller people, shorts look shorter on them than anyone else. So, it is a lot harder to find shorts that are deemed appropriate. 

I spoke to a few students about what they thought of the dress code. Hadley West, a sophomore at Lakeland High School says, “ the dress code is sexist. This is because the girls get dress-coded and the guys don’t for the same thing. We should also be responsible for what we wear.” 

While I spoke to Hadley some other students added to the conversation and said that the dress code is super sexist and not fair. They also said that the boys in sports were allowed to not wear shirts but, in soccer they made the girls keep their shirts on and they couldn’t just wear sports bras. 

Overall, dress codes may not be necessary for high-school students. So some students think that the dress code is unnecessary and sexist. Others just don’t care what other people wear and think that the student can decide what they think is okay to wear to school.