The school district’s dress code requirements for intermediate school and up is that students are required to wear a polo shirt with a collar and khaki, black or navy pants. Jeans, leggings and sweatpants are not allowed; however, due to COVID-19 coronavirus, students are currently in a troubling situation.

During this pandemic, students should be given some leeway when it comes to the dress code. Right now, trying to follow a dress code policy should by the least of students’ worries.

Parents have lost their jobs because of the pandemic. These families have enough to worry about already, without the addition of having to buy specific clothing items for school. Furthermore, everyone is supposed to limit their trips to public places, only going to the store for the bare necessities. Students and their families should not be forced to make unnecessary trips to the store to buy clothes. Besides that, most of the dressing rooms in stores are closed anyways, and right now is currently not an ideal time to shop for any form of clothing. The dress code policy is a major inconvenience for several students.

The district argues that having a dress code makes the students look better by preventing them from dressing inappropriately and helps prevent them from getting bullied; however, as far as looking more professional goes, most students will still find ways to look trashy while staying in the dress code. They might wear skin tight pants, a skirt just slightly too short, or crazy socks and shoes. There is nothing inappropriate about wearing a t-shirt with jeans. Trying to look “nice” is the least of our concerns. It is true that bullying can be an issue, but a dress code policy is not going to fix that issue because there are plenty of other things to get bullied for besides clothing. In addition, the school can not necessarily provide clothing from the donations they’ve received to students out of dress code this year. If students are not comfortable with wearing clothing that someone else has worn, they can simply refuse. Even though scientists are now saying that the coronavirus germ doesn’t live on surfaces for as long as originally thought, some people still are not comfortable with wearing what someone else has worn.

As a compromise, the district should create an alternate dress code for this year that is less strict and allows almost anything except for clothing showing too much skin. They could say that tank tops are not allowed or that shorts need to be at least a certain length. That way there is no reason to worry about students showing too much skin. A looser dress code policy would make students’ lives less stressful and give them one less thing to worry about in this pandemic.

The current dress code policy should be taken away at least during the COVID-19 pandemic. If given the chance, students will not abuse a more lax dress code opportunity.