Societal presure to conform, part one
Today is the first day of school at Chico State, where in order to show respect to the event and school, I chose to come to school wearing a coat and tie, a Chico State tie at that. Students wearing t-shirts and jeans or their derivatives are everywhere. Emblemed t-shirts and shorts seem to be the uniform of the day.
Mine is the same decision made by Golden Gate High School senior, Austin Perkins, 17 except that the Bonita, Fl student got suspended from class. It seems that according to the school administration, he didn't follow the dress code.
“I thought it was better than a polo shirt,” Perkins said in the story that ran in the Bonita News.. “So, my friend and I thought why not take the extra step? (The dress code) says business dress. A coat and tie are business dress. Instead we were thrown in a room where we couldn’t talk.”
The heavy in this piece is Principal Bob Spano. Before the suspension, he said that he warned Perkins and other students that to wear a coat and tie would be in violation of the dress code. When the students returned to campus waring such, they were brought to the principal's office. Because they didn't comply. “We had a few students who chose not to follow it ...”, Spano said.
His overriding reasoning in this issue was that by imposing the new dress code on his students, strangers would stand out while standing on campus, which he said keeps the campus safe.
There's that word again, safety, which seems to walk hand in hand with conformity. But the question is when did the memo come out that safety is the eleventh amendment to the Bill of Rights? More on this notion tomorrow.