Friday, 02 March 2012
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Jumping To Extremes - Suspended Over Hair Dye
This is a guest post from Elizabeth from www.rockabyeparents.com.
Many schools today choose to enforce strict dress codes. Some do it because they feel that it will help promote learning. Still others do it to help prevent and stop the formation of gangs. Whatever the reason it obviously needs to be enforced if it’s going to work, but does it really warrant a suspension over a Kook-Aid dye job?
Rachel Neeley, a 10-year-old fifth grader, went to a sleepover last weekend. She and her friends decided to dye some of their hair with Kool-Aid. Rachel asked, and was granted, permission by her dad to do it. The entire situation sounds so innocent.
Monday came and Rachel still had blue streaks in her hair from the Kool-Aid. Her teacher informed her that the unnatural hair color was against the school dress code. Her teacher told her that she needed to get the color out before returning to school. Since it’s impossible to wash a Kool-Aid dye job out Rachel returned to school on Tuesday with dye still in her hair. The teacher reported her to the principal and she was unofficially suspended until the dye was gone.
I truly cannot believe that the school would suspend this girl. I am a teacher and I can tell you kids break dress codes all of the time. When kids wear a hat or hood on their head we tell them to take it off. If they wear an inappropriate shirt we make them turn it inside out. Didn’t wear the required collared shirt? Then we’ll loan you one for the day. A teacher would never send a student to the office due to these slights. The main problem here is that the only way Rachel could cover the blue streaks would be to have all of her hair dyed back to it’s original color.
I agree that the school should address the matter, but I think a warning that action would be taken if she came to school after dying it again would have been enough. I doubt that her hair was offensive to her classmates or that it was distracting them from learning, so no other steps needed to be taken for the matter. The school likely wanted to show that they had a no tolerance policy for dress code violations, but they have agreed to let Rachel come back with blue streaks in her hair. Rachel and her father tried many different ways to get the blue out, but were unsuccessful. The school now says that as long as they made an attempt that’s good enough. Letting her come back with her hair still colored makes their stand pointless.
I can’t even imagine being the parent in this situation. I’m sure many parents, and especially fathers, wouldn’t think about the dress code if their daughters had asked to do the same thing. Plus I’m sure most people would expect something as simple as Kool-Aid to wash right out. I think if I was the parent I’d be totally shocked over the extreme consequences, and I’d be annoyed because the situation would cause my daughter to miss out on important learning.
What it all comes down to is the question of whether or not the situation truly deserved such an extreme consequence.
Do you feel that the girl should have been suspended?
Read the entire article, and watch the news clips here: http://www.wcpo.com/dpp/news/region_indiana/lawrenceburg/kool-aid-hair-coloring-gets-bright-girl-suspended-from-school
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Comments (33)
Don't really see the big deal. Rules are rules. I'm sure daddy didn't know that it would come out on her hair lol
She broke the rules, plain and simple. Most schools send along a handbook with all the rules and the punishments that follow if broken. It's up to the kids and the parents to make sure they're upheld.
My work has that hair colour rule. I read it and thought, really? Like having an 'unnatural' hair colour would make the entire chain of restaurants look bad? Sigh. Luckily even when someone had peacock blue hair, they weren't reprimanded.
Lol I went to a Catholic grade school and high school and they were pretty strict about hair color (boys and girls) and lengths for boys. They were also strict on length of skirts and whether your shirt was tucked in. I thought it was pretty annoying sometimes but I can understand dress code.
I don't really know if the girl should have been suspended. I guess it depends if her and the parents knew about the rules before hand.
I can name 100 different things that are way worse than unnaturally colored hair. I also have to say that the picture of her hair didn't look like it had any blue in it! It must've been very light. If someone should get suspended from school because of something with the dress code, what about all of the people with really low pants? I'm sure they must do that at ten years old. If not, then what about wearing really short skirts? Even at ten years old it's a bit inapropiate. Sure not in the sexual way, but seeing a kid's underwear isn't really something that people want to see.
Y'all are missing the point. SHE VIOLATED THE DRESSCODE. Dresscodes aren't there to ignore. This is one of those stupid 'duh'-posts I can't believe there is controversy over.
@beesuze@xanga - You touched on something that I wondered about when reading this - does this particular school show the same level of dedication to all dress code infractions? I only ask because every school I ever went to had a dress code (Well, except maybe my college... we probably had one but I never knew what it was, or cared) and I definitely broke them all at one point or another, and was never disciplined for it. I have younger sisters and the frequency with which you can spot dress code violations is pretty astounding, so I wonder if, like you said, their suspension list looks like a prostitute convention. Haha.
I understand that rules are rules and all, but come on - how many schools do you know of that really strictly, fairly, universally enforce their dress codes? I know I've never been to one.
As others have mentioned, I can understand if the dad didn't realize the Kool-Aid wouldn't wash out, and every suggestion I've seen to remove it has been something really damaging that wouldn't be very good for a kid's hair. I'm sure if it's just a few streaks she could keep it pulled back while it grows out and it wouldn't be some huge distration.
Okay, I just watched the video and would like to slightly amend my statement - the school is DEFINITELY being ridiculous. I couldn't even see the blue until they did a close up shot on just her hair. It's hardly noticeable, and I'm pretty sure that there are plenty of more distracting dress code infractions walking around un-suspended.