Got a D or F? Then you can’t go get Taco Bell. Got a short shirt? Automatically dress coded. But lastly, got an attitude? Campus Cleanup!
With school back in session, this also means the well known, fought over, intimidating protocols our school follows. Fellow students are never afraid to voice their opinions, but have they ever asked what admin has to say? I talked to principal Mr. Bollinger about one touchy topic: dress code. “The dress code is simple. The premise behind it is that we wanted it to be a professional environment and so we have to put some sort of boundaries in place.” Mr. Bollinger gives an example of how wearing a bikini to school clearly wouldn’t be okay and how administrators had to set aside a strict protocol to enforce examples like this from happening. “I’ve had people saying showing a little bit of stomach is not that big of a deal and what if it is okay to be two inches, but who’s going to measure that? Are you comfortable with me coming up to your stomach and putting a ruler on your stomach to make sure it’s not more than two inches?” Mr. Bollinger’s ending statement was that the school puts things in place because really an inch of your stomach isn’t that big of a deal, but it’s all about where you draw the line. “It’s easier to say no shoulders and it’s been two finger width on your shoulder for as long as I’ve been here and I think it’s a good place to draw the line.” Mr. Bollinger wanted it to be known that if you don’t have anything in place, it’s a very slippery slope because then students will push boundaries.
The second topic I covered with Mr. Bollinger was the skyrocketing campus cleanup. “There’s been quite a few kids in campus cleanup and that is a consequence for some choice you made. That choice you made is either being tardy, misbehaving in class, choosing to not go to an academic mentor, or avoiding content tutoring. It’s a choice you make and we’ve got kids, maybe more, making poor choices at this time with school kicking back in.” Mr. Bollinger and the rest of the admin hopes this behavior will change as the school year goes on. “How many kids would go to content tutoring if there weren’t consequences?” Mr. Bollinger asked but didn’t answer because the answer is obvious: not many. “When we put something in place there has to be consequences,” was Mr. Bollinger’s final statement. What’s your opinion on campus and dress code? Whether you think it’s good or bad, it’s clear Palisade strives for success with these boundaries.
