The second semester of school is stressful enough, but what makes school even more stressful is finding something to wear that won’t get a student stopped by an administrator in the middle of the school day.

Even though both boys and girls have dress codes, girls often find themselves to be the only ones school officials have dress code problems with. Most girls decide to wear what they feel is comfortable in order to get through the day, including shorts, tanks, or any other clothing they own.

But there’s a brief moment when walking through the rotunda before school when almost all girls fear they’ll get dress coded no matter what they wear. Because of Texas’ unpredictable weather, lots of girls find themselves wearing shorts in December and January even though it’s still winter. And at this point in the year a lot of girls think teachers and administrators aren’t going to dress code them.

However, if a girl decides to wear jeans that have rips above the knee it’s considered a big problem. From personal experience, I know this to be true as last semester I wore some light wash jeans with two rips at each knee, and found myself in the AP office for being out of dress code, even though I had worn the same jeans multiple times before with no problem. The reason: I had decided to go down a different hallway to get to my class that day, making me run into an unfamiliar teacher who thought my jeans were unacceptable.

And that’s the problem with the school and district dress code. It’s not that there is one, is that almost everybody on campus interprets dress code differently. According to the Student Handbook of Frisco ISD, girls are not allowed to wear lower body garments that do not reach the length of their fingertips when arms are straight down by their side, or wear “revealing” shirts. That’s it. There is no visual aid or more in depth explanation provided.

Girls could wear the same outfit two consecutive days and could get dress coded one day but not the next depending on what teacher or staff member sees them. The dress code standards really depend on what each teacher believes the rules should be, as well as how certain clothing looks on certain girls, because if a tall girl is wearing athletic shorts, her shorts will look much shorter than a shorter girl with the same shorts due to perspective.

The dress code system is too dependent on a person’s perspective and interpretation of the rules and subsequent enforcement which makes it tough for students to truly understand what is and what isn’t acceptable. For a dress code to work consistently, students need to know exactly what is and isn’t allowed and a more precise definition in the Student Handbook would be a good way to start.