There’s a new policy in town, folks, and during assembly on Friday, August 16th, StuCo held a Fashion Show to help students visualize this year’s changes to the Dress Code.

The changes, and the way the policy will be enforced, is likely a result of fashion faux pas on campus over the last couple of years.

Interim Upper School Director, Mrs.Conn, describes her motivation behind the recent dress code modifications and the changes in its enforcement. 

“It’s two pieces: heavily enforcing and meeting the kids where they are.”

According to the policy, the purpose of the dress code is “to maintain an atmosphere conducive to our educational, professional, and school spirit goals.” So this summer, admin met with members of the Student Council to come up with guidelines and consequences that would work effectively in the 2024-25 school year.

StuCo President Victoria Neiva shared that in her view, the new code works well for students as well as the school.

“We are allowed to show our personalities more, while also being presentable,” Neiva said.

The changes in reality aren’t very severe— in fact, in some ways, they are more relaxed. Some changes include the ability to wear solid colored crew neck shirts, leggings, crocs, and sandals. Rather, the kicker to this year’s switch will be enforcement of the prohibited items that were most abused in previous years, including shirts with no midriff showing, leggings and shirts with unapproved designs, shorter-than-mid-thigh shorts, slippers, and pajama pants.

Administration has already shown they’ll be taking the code more seriously through a variety of all school announcements, along with today’s fashion show. And most importantly, they have already implemented a new reporting and tracking system for infractions. When a student encounters an infraction, the consequences faced will be as follows:

1st offense: verbal warning

2nd offense: verbal warning + parent notification

3rd offense: after- school detention + parent notification

4th offense: Parent meeting

The scale of consequences seen here is clearly a big shift from last year, and it remains to be seen how the new tracking system will pan out.