By Jovanna Esparza and Naomi Luna
photo by: Jovanna Esparza
CAPTION: One of the changes to the dress code involves tears or rips in jeans. Administration will allow certain styles of jeans to have distressed areas, but full tears are not permitted.
A long time struggle between administration and students has been somewhat put to peace as a new dress code revision has made its way onto campus. The leniency provided by the administration is surprising, but welcome around campus, even though our newly lifted restrictions have restrictions themselves.
What made our administration change their minds about leggings and ripped jeans? “It’s because we listen to the kids, and their concern is that that’s all there is at the mall. Students come to us and say, ‘We cant find anything to wear, this is the style.'” Vice Principal Vicente Arcos says.
Female and male students both enjoy wearing ripped jeans, while it is common to see girls wear leggings all year round.
“In the winter you guys like to wear leggings, all we are asking is for you to wear a long enough shirt to cover your bottom portion of your body,” Arcos says.
Although wearing ripped jeans and leggings is a new privilege on campus, students wearing them is no new trend at Holmes. Students wearing jeans with holes in them was always a problem, even as it was addressed in the annual Success Assemblies at the beginning of each new school year. Getting dress coded for ripped jeans or leggings caused students to stay put in the AP office until one of their parents would bring an extra pair of clothes, or they would change into school provided sweats, or even end up spending a day in ISS, which often led students to miss more than one period of valuable class time.
“We started seeing that kids are here at school trying to get an education and something as simple as a small hole in your jeans was causing us to send you to the office and taking a period or two of your day,” Arcos said.
Administration also observed this to be a worsening issue throughout the year. Now that administration has loosened their dress code enforcement, students are respecting the rules a little bit more since their voices have been heard and validated. The new policy is that students can wear ripped jeans, as long as the holes do not expose large amounts of your legs, and the holes need to be closer to the knees if the holes are more noticeable.
Junior Amber Garcia thinks it is a positive change.
“I’m liking it because we get more advantages, and now I can wear leggings in the winter and not always wear jeans with my winter sweaters,” Garcia said.
For more on official dress code policy, visit https://nisd.net/holmes/dress-code.