The other day, I got a letter from my son's Middle School Principal announcing an escalation of their no headwear policy. For some time, it has been against school rules to wear any sort of hat or hood in school. We've never had any problems with that. All along, Nick has been wearing hooded jackets as the best compromise between competing agendas. He needs to maximize his comfort while waiting in the cool morning air at the bus stop without sweltering in school all day. His class schedule and school over-crowding make it difficult to actually use the scant joke they try to pass off as a storage locker to stow his jacket in. In fact, his bus driver routinely is so late that he is pronounced tardy when he goes straight from the bus to his first class in the morning. Plus he says he likes to wear the jacket in class because the temperature is often kept quite cool.
The new rule requires that any hat or hooded garment be immediately stowed in the locker if it is brought onto school property. As mentioned already, this is a challenge. Additionally, as he is only 12, one can expect that he will inevitably forget to retrieve a jacket at the end of the day, which creates a "snowball effect" when he brings another jacket the next day which is required to immediately be stowed and potentially forgotten. The letter said that this action was necessary because there have been multiple recent instances of mistaken identity when trying to investigate disciplinary incidents.

I can't comprehend how the administration is unable to enforce a no-head-wear policy. This is a middle-school. We're talking 6th-8th graders here. They're IN SCHOOL at the time. Seems to me that the administration doesn't want to be bothered with enforcing the rule, so they played one very ugly "card". They chose to punish the innocent for the misdeeds of a few. I have learned that "liberty" is rarely dealing with issues like being held hostage or being kidnapped. Instead, it is these seemingly small transgressions that erode true liberty. Furthermore, this case exemplifies an instance where the administration missed an opportunity to reinforce the concept of personal responsibility. By failing to hold accountable those who were violating the no-head-wear rule, they have actually given the lesson that those who are "good" should expect to suffer so we can further divide and differentiate between the "bad" and the "good". I can only imagine that this will continue to escalate and the administration will further cultivate an atmosphere of intolerance, bigotry, and prejudicial stereotyping. It isn't too much of a stretch to wonder when certain colors (associated with gang affiliation) or fad garments (such as a handkerchief draped from the pocket) will be added to the list of banned items. I don't know why we tolerate individualism at all.