Chris Zavala argues that the school's new dress code policy attempts to "create an illusion that the school is some romanticized fairy tale play pen." In their attempts, he argues, they are creating a stronger opposition.

Seemingly since last year, I've only seen teeming attention being divided towards the area of upholding a particular dress code. I've noticed a hindering crackdown on rings of all sorts: hats, and anything with "suggestive" logos on clothing.  Its purpose? To create an illusion that the school is some romanticized fairy tale play pen.  Have you ever wondered why red clothing is treated as contraband; why campus supervisors divide their time worrying about frivolous rings pierced through an ever-growing amount of students bodies?  Look back a couple decades and realize the addition of earrings it is an adaptation society has grown to accept, and only one spawn of many more to come. So how long until feeble society grows to accept this new branch of social evolution? After countless piercings have already been torn asunder? All for a purpose that serves no reason, with an in-genuine "concern for safety."

Any excuse for "concern for safety" is hollow at best.  If there was an authentic concern for safety the school wouldn't hold sporting events in blistering heat.  The same weather conditions that cause for dismissal of recess for some elementary schools. The school also wouldn't employ such pep rally techniques as the "Grizz Games" if there was a genuine concern for our safety (which ultimately, is a group of rowdy teens playing contact sports on slippery canvases).  Any concern for infection is an excuse at best, when in fact that it is the actual removal and constant reinsertion of the piercing that increases risk of infection.  Even after promptly being told to remove such rings, naturally they are only to return to their places of bearing within the minute, hour, or day.  Thus, this will only continue this dance of a vicious cycle. (As we've seen before, naturally humans try and protect their rights and there is no exception here).

When further faced with the "why?", though I see the value in concern for school security, to what extent is its cost? How far do we allow them to drill in the point as long as it's in the name of safety?  In Plato's "Allegory of the Cave," he poses the concept of a man bound to the shackles of a dark cavern for the entirety of his life, only to later be revealed to the surrounding outside world for the first time. Once enlightened, so to speak, the freed prisoner would not want to return to the cave (naturally). So with the nonchalant policies last year on rings and such, are we expected to just humble ourselves at the feet of suppression? It seems to me the more importance the school system weighs on such matters, the more they empower and give worth to it. An unnecessary importance, an unnecessary evil.  Least of all, parental concession is required before piercing services can be rendered—meaning that parents are fully aware of the situation, and any "dangers" that may accompany it.

A simple day in the life of a student at Granite Hill's school, same picture, new frame illustrating the lengths to which such institutions impose upon both teachers and students alike. Journeying my way to class I'm stopped by the local campus police officer and told in a deep throat to remove my black Philadelphia "Phillies" hat for the shallow reason that its "suggestive." Apparently enough, the universal meaning for the acronym "P" is "Poros" (Spanish slang derived from the name of our quaint town of Porterville). How amusing I found it though, that we are to prohibit anything that could be remotely suggestive, even if the connection holds little ties to the knots of logical reason. I could literally make up an ill meaning for any given amount of acronym's…are we to forbid the use of whatever my mind can fancy a pair of words to? A lucrative example would be misconstruing the letters "GHS" to stand aptly for "Gangbanging Havoc Starters." Is the school now in precautions to remove these letters too now? People seem to forget that words are just that, that language is a tool created by humans, that we give power to the words and their connotations, it is not words and their loosely affiliated meanings that dominate over us.  So thus all the school has managed to accomplish in the stead of making the school "Safer" is making us more Aware to a non existent Problem. A problem they themselves have created in this nonsensical attempt at painting a false portrait of "sanctity."  Prior to this mishap, the idea of automatically affiliating "P" with "Poros" hadn't crossed the boundaries of my mind, they actually implemented the idea, the enforcers that would hope to strip power from "gangsters." Ironic then that it only places importance where there was none before. I guess ignorance really is bliss!

Another instance would be my dismissal to the office, for the mundane task of removing my lip piercing. And the matter of "cause and effect" came to mind. Me, on my way to second period, well on time, surely not in any way impaired, nor distracted by my choice of expression, but surely enough I get hauled off to the administrative for breaking no other rule than that which the first amendment guarantees. So in retrospect, had I not been hassled, and had the supervisor not been compelled to enforce such policies (causes), I would have been in class working, undisturbed as opposed to say in the office wasting both mine and the faculty’s time (effects).

I see the continued effort of this "cause" leading only to wasted focus on the wrong aspects of school. The school board on a whole needs to give up the illusion, quit trying to advocate this façade of a "safe campus." Instead of making it seem as if the school is safe by dusting all the suggestive material under the carpet, they could actually take a hack at the root of the problem. Imposing red limits as if by logic that "If you can't see it, it obviously must not be there." Does stripping the lion of its mane make it any less ferocious? Does blending in those the school would hope to remove help the situation any? Does filling the pothole with mud and water change the fact that there’s a gaping whole in the ground?

Quit allowing the direction of focus to be shifted to second priority matters that they really need not concern themselves with. Especially when in the face of all this there are many more far underlying and pressing matters at hand. Mrs. May in the library, for instance, is over exerting herself with a bundle of books large enough to burden the football team, or for example, The Grizzly Gazette being further disadvantaged in the face of cutbacks, while expected to defend their reigning standards of excellence. Tally tiger that, along with the fact that the school system actually hinders the pursuit of knowledge, being that it makes it so strenuous an attempt to lay claim to the stakes of AP classes, and programs such as AVID. Why aim to achieve, when such classes have the indirect effect of putting off vital classes necessary for graduation (PE, and art to be particular)? So despite such matters, the school continues to delve into the enforcement of trivial rules. How much longer will the continued patience be worn thin by unnecessary precautions? Should our tax money be paying $445, 274  per school for Campus Supervisors to dawdle their time, straining their 8 hours of work plundering for metal trinkets lodged in peoples’ bodies? You be the judge…