Students in the Springfield Public School District are expected to abide by the following dress code. Students who violate the dress code will be subject to disciplinary consequences outlined in the Informational and Discipline Handbook which is distributed to students at the beginning of every school year.

Dress and grooming shall neither present a risk to the health, safety or general welfare of students or others in the school nor interfere with or disrupt the educational environment or process.

Dress and grooming shall not be contrary to curriculum goals and/or educational objectives or advertise, promote or picture alcoholic beverages, tobacco, illegal drugs or illegal or violent behavior.

Dress and grooming, including accessories, shall not display lewd, vulgar, obscene or plainly-offensive language or symbols, including gang symbols.

Hats, caps, bandannas, sweat bands and sunglasses shall not be worn in the buildings.

Pierced jewelry, other than earrings worn in the ear, shall not be worn in the buildings; neither shall spiked apparel and accessories or chains that can be used as weapons.

Shoe laces should be tied.

Coats and jackets should not be worn in the building without principal permission.

Clothing with holes, ragged hems or cut-off hemlines, or made of transparent or fishnet fabric, or clothing that exposes the chest, abdomen, genital area or buttocks, undergarments or the legs above mid-thigh, shall not be worn in the buildings.

Properly-fitting clothing is to be worn. Oversized, extremely baggy clothing or improperly-fitted clothing is not allowed. Pants, shorts or skirts must be worn at the waist; sagging is prohibited.

Tattoos that, by their content, violate any of the provisions of the Student Dress Code must be covered at all times while students are on school property and/or in attendance at school sponsored activities.


Springfield Public Schools - Student Dress Code, www.sps186.org/about/policy/?p=22093.

Ultimately, Summer was not arrested. Instead, she was given a 10-day suspension, banned from senior activities, including graduation, and the principal is "still considering expelling her," she says. The principal, however, cites the reason for her suspension as "insubordination." Summer's mom is planning to appeal the school's disciplinary decision.

"It's just sad because I worked so hard for four years to walk across that stage," she told WCNC. "We have drug dealers walking across that stage, we have sex offenders walking across that stage, and then the 4.4 student who showed her shoulders can't."

This is not the first time Hickory Ridge High School has made a controversial decision about a dress code. As reported by the Independent Tribune, 45 students at the school got in trouble this past fall for wearing leggings with shirts that did not reach their fingertips.

Hirsh, Sophie. “This Student Is BANNED From Her Graduation After Wearing This Shirt.” Allure, Allure Magazine, 2017, www.allure.com/story/student-banned-from-graduation-over-shirt.

“I’ve never seen a boy called out for his attire even though they also break the rules,” says Sunseri, who last summer produced Shame: A Documentary on School Dress Code, a film featuring interviews with dozens of her classmates and her school principal, that explores the negative impact biased rules can have on girls’ confidence and sense of self. The documentary now has tens of thousands of YouTube views, while a post about the dress-code policy at her high school—Woodford County High—has been circulated more than 45,000 times on the Internet.

Although dress codes have long been a subject of contention, the growth of platforms like Facebook and Instagram, along with a resurgence of student activism, has prompted a major uptick in protests against attire rules, including popular campaigns similar to the one championed by Sunseri. Conflict over these policies has also spawned hundreds of Change.org petitions and numerous school walkouts. Many of these protests have criticized the dress codes as sexist in that they unfairly target girls by body-shaming and blaming them for promoting sexual harassment. Documented cases show female students being chastised by school officials, sent home, or barred from attending events like prom.

Meanwhile, gender non-conforming and transgender students have also clashed with such policies on the grounds that they rigidly dictate how kids express their identities. Transgender students have been sent home for wearing clothing different than what’s expected of their legal sex, while others have been excluded from yearbooks. Male students, using traditionally female accessories that fell within the bounds of standard dress code rules, and vice versa, have been nonetheless disciplined for their fashion choices. These cases are prompting their own backlash.

Dress codes—given the power they entrust school authorities to regulate student identity—can, according to students, ultimately establish discriminatory standards as the norm. The prevalence and convergence of today’s protests suggest that schools not only need to update their policies—they also have to recognize and address the latent biases that go into creating them.

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At Woodford County High, the dress code bans skirts and shorts that fall higher than the knee and shirts that extend below the collarbone. Recently, a photo of a female student at the school who was sent home after wearing a seemingly appropriate outfit that nonetheless showed collarbone—went viral on Reddit and Twitter.

The restrictions and severity of dress codes vary widely across states, 22 of which have some form of law granting local districts the power to establish these rules, according to the Education Commission of the States. In the U.S., over half of public schools have a dress code, which frequently outline gender-specific policies. Some administrators see these distinctions as necessary because of the different ways in which girls and boys dress. In many cases, however, female-specific policies account for a disproportionate number of the attire rules included in school handbooks. Certain parts of ​Arkansas’s statewide dress code, for example, exclusively applies to females.* Passed in 2011, the law “requires districts to prohibit the wearing of clothing that exposes underwear, buttocks, or the breast of a female student.” (The provision prohibiting exposure of the "underwear and buttocks" applies to all students.)

Depending on administrators and school boards, some places are more relaxed, while others take a hard line. Policies also tend to fluctuate, according to the University of Maryland American-studies professor and fashion historian Jo Paoletti, who described dress-code adaptations as very “reactionary” to whatever happens to be popular at the time—whether it’s white go-go boots or yoga pants. Jere Hochman, the superintendent of New York’s Bedford Central School District echoes Paoletti in explaining that officials revisit his district’s policy, which has been in place “for years and years and years,” “on an informal basis.” “It’s likely an annual conversation, he notes, “based on the times and what’s changed and fads.”

While research on dress codes remains inconclusive regarding the correlation between their implementation with students’ academic outcomes, many educators agree that they can serve an important purpose: helping insure a safe and comfortable learning environment, banning T-shirts with offensive racial epithets, for example. When students break the rules by wearing something deemed inappropriate, administrators must, of course, enforce school policies.

The process of defining what’s considered “offensive” and “inappropriate,” however, can get quite murky. Schools may promote prejudiced policies, even if those biases are unintentional. For students who attend schools with particularly harsh rules like that at Woodford, one of the key concerns is the implication that women should be hypercognizant about their physical identity and how the world responds to it. “The dress code makes girls feel self-conscious, ashamed, and uncomfortable in their own bodies,” says Sunseri.

Yet Sunseri emphasizes that this isn’t where she and other students take the most issue. “It's not really the formal dress code by itself that is so discriminatory, it’s the message behind the dress code,” she says, “My principal constantly says that the main reason for [it] is to create a ‘distraction-free learning zone’ for our male counterparts.” Woodford County is one of many districts across the country to justify female-specific rules with that logic, and effectively, to place the onus on girls to prevent inappropriate reactions from their male classmates. (Woodford County High has not responded to multiple requests for comment.)