Over the years, the dress code has become less and less a part of being a student at Hackley. On any given day, anyone on campus is bound to encounter at least one person out of dress code.
The Hackley dress code is not very clear. There are a lot of gray areas, especially for girls.
During the winter, most people will wear blue jeans paired with a sweater or shirt. However, when the weather is nicer outside, most girls will wear skirts and dresses, and boys will wear nonathletic shorts and some sort of round-neck or collared shirt.
During the winter, is when most people are out of dress code. On cold, gloomy days, most students will turn to sweatpants as a cozy option to wear to school. “Sweatpants are almost 90%, maybe 95%” of what he dress codes students for wearing,” said Upper School Physics Teacher William McLay..
Among the faculty in the Upper School, Mr. McLay is one of the main dress code proponents. The majority of teachers do not enforce the dress code for students, even when students are blatantly out of dress code.
Mr. McLay thinks that just like other rules at Hackley that are enforced, the dress code also needs to be enforced. “Repeat offenders need to be given Saturday detentions,” said Mr. McLay. “When you’re late to school a certain number of times, it’s a Saturday, and I think that, obviously, you can control your dress code more than you can control being late to school.”
Mr. McLay believes that having a dress code is an important part of Hackley. “This is not everybody’s home. This is a place of work. No matter what. I have a dress code as a teacher. I have to adhere to it because it’s my job … Students here are not at home. And so they should dress appropriately for being outside, where they’re doing the majority of their work.”
The role of school is to prepare students for college and educate them so that they can be successful as adults. Mr. McLay pointed out that businesses expect a certain level of dress from their adult employees, and therefore, the same should be expected for students.
Every teacher has a different reason for why they do or don’t enforce the dress code. For both the Assistant Head of the Upper School, Chris Arnold, and Mr. McLay, the reason they dress code students is simply because the dress code is a rule within the school, and as a society, they believe we have to learn to adhere to the rules.
Most Upper School students quickly learn which teachers tend to dress code and try to avoid them when they are out of dress code. But Mr. McLay believes that “If there is uniform enforcement among the teachers, it [would] actually reduce student anxiety. The lack of enforcement actually increases student anxiety, and there are studies around just that.”
Even though there are a few strong-willed teachers, such as Mr. McLay, who enforce the dress code. The majority of Upper School faculty do not enforce the dress code for students. This leads to it being pretty ineffective among students, especially upperclassmen, considering most of the teachers that dress code spend the majority of their time with freshmen.
Because the dress code is so vague, there tend to be a lot of gray areas, particularly for girls. This often leads to a lot of boys getting dress code violations, but girls being able to get away with it. Most days, the majority of lunch detention is boys out of dress code for wearing sweatpants.
It is a lot easier for girls to avoid being dress coded during the day than it is for boys, because there are different things like sweaters/knit pants that are not necessarily sweatpants but close.
Also, among the faculty members who enforce the dress code on students, most of them are male, and they teach underclassmen.
“As a male teacher, it is often harder for a male teacher to judge a girl’s dress,” Mr. McLay said. “There’s an extra level for us, of not wanting to verge on, are we being inappropriate in terms of that? … There are times when I believe a girl’s out of dress code, I will email one of the female deans, and say I think you should take a look at so and so.”
On the other hand, Head of School Charles Franklin stays away from dress coding students altogether.
“I think our current dress code is very difficult to ascertain what is and is not in the dress code sometimes. … I would rather err on the side of caution and say, look, I didn’t know that those pants were actually allowed or not allowed. Mr. Arnold, Mr. King, the deans, the faculty upper school, have a much better sense of, like, what [is allowed],” said Mr. Franklin.
The reason Mr. Franklin stays away from dress coding is that he doesn’t have the same type of interaction with students that teachers have. Teachers constantly have students coming in and out of their classes. They have the benefit of being able to differentiate between certain clothes one student is wearing to another.
Also, across all three divisions, there are different standards of dress. In the Lower School, there is practically no dress code, but in both the Middle and Upper Schools, there is a dress code. However, in Middle School, the dress code is arguably more intensely enforced. For example, a seventh-grade girl might not be able to wear a tank top with spaghetti straps, whereas a tenth-grade girl could get away with wearing a dress with spaghetti straps.
To both Mr. Franklin’s and Mr. McLay’s points, there are various gray areas within the dress code, which makes it hard to differentiate between what students are and are not allowed to wear. That is the problem with the dress code at Hackley. Since it is not really carried out, most students don’t follow it.
Hackley needs to either refine the dress code and ensure it is enforced or get rid of it altogether. There is no point in having a dress code if it is not enforced. And the only way to fairly enforce the dress code is for faculty to collectively implement it and tighten it up.
