molly's guide to cyberpunk gardening

lore dump: my high school's batshit graduation rules

The following exchange popped up in the teacher group chat just now:

First Year Teacher: I have several seniors absent. Do I mark them as present? I know today is Senior Skip Day.

Principal: You mark them absent. Senior Skip Day is not on the calendar.

An unexcused absence? That's it?

I went through high school in the mid-late 1990s. It was the era of "Zero Tolerance" - the bonkers theory that if you punish the crap out of the tiniest infractions, nobody will commit larger ones. In middle school, this meant we got group punishments if any students were caught fighting. If two students in the same grade fought, the entire grade was punished. If students from different grades fought each other, their respective grades were punished. if they were fighting at lunchtime, the entire lunch group was punished.

I remember once sitting in "punishment" next to a student *who had actively intervened to stop a fight* before the participants could actually lay hands on each other. Didn't matter. He got punished too. It was SO backwards.

But this was the philosophy upon which we entered our senior year. The list of possible infractions was mind-boggling. But they all led to the same consequence: You Will Not Graduate. We Will Withhold Your Diploma Until You Take Summer School, Even Though You Don't Need More Credits. We Will Punish You All Summer Because We Can.

The infractions included, but were by no means limited to:

If you try to organize a Senior Skip Day, or if you are caught skipping, you will not graduate.
If any one of you tries to pull anything resembling a Senior Prank, you will not graduate.
If you try to decorate parking spots, decorate your locker, put up posters, or do anything else to commemorate your class - even temporarily - you will not graduate.
If you decorate your graduation caps, you will not graduate.
If you violate the graduation dress code, you will not graduate.
If you do ANYTHING other than what you are specifically trained to do at graduation, you will not graduate. ("Training" took three entire half-days of school. I am not joking.)

The dress code one was a BIG deal. The school was highkey OBSESSED with dress codes. We weren't allowed to wear jeans or shirts without collars until I was in middle school. We were never allowed to wear sleeveless shirts or shirts that bared our shoulders or midriffs. Shorts were only allowed if they touched the floor while you were kneeling - same as skirts. Did I mention this was the late 1990s? That dress code hadn't been updated since the 1960s.

The graduation dress code was even more restrictive than the regular dress code:

All the boys wore blue robes; all the girls wore white. It was the 90s. You got what matched the sex listed on your birth certificate. Full stop.
Boys were required to wear dress pants, dress shoes, and a long-sleeved dress shirt with a collar. There was a very specific assigned color palette; I don't remember the details but I know khakis and brown shoes were Right Out. Ties were optional, which I thought was weird. If you're going so far already, just make a decision on them. Yeesh.
Girls were required to wear a dress. The dress's collar, sleeves, and hem could NOT show past the hems of the gown. Girls also had to wear *white* nylons (no, nobody cared if they looked shite with your skin tone) and white dress shoes "appropriate for spring." I guess that meant sandals? Most of us wore some kind of sandal. We were not allowed to wear jewelry apart from class rings. Hairstyles also had standards (I wore mine in a low ponytail) - no hair accessories

If you violated the dress code, you had to fix it before you were required to line up for graduation. If you couldn't, guess what you didn't get to do? Graduate.

One of my friends was the first to get that "girls must wear dresses" rule changed. She and her mom actually went to the school board about it. Even the school board had to admit that my friend was more "modestly dressed" in the uniform prescribed for boys - dress pants, dress shoes, long-sleeved shirt buttoned all the way to the neck.

Meanwhile, I was fine with wearing a dress. But I was NOT fine with the stranglehold these dumb rules had on our high school graduation. In the finest "this kid will grow up to be a lawyer" tradition, I started looking for a loophole.

I found it in the visibility requirements. The rules said my hem, collar, and sleeves couldn't show past the edges of the gown. It didn't say my dress had to be invisible BENEATH the gown.

The gowns were white. Do you know how many colors are visible beneath cheap white nylon? A LOT. And the mid-late 1990s were FULL of garish 60s-inspired prints. Jackpot.

My graduation dress was a hunter orange paisley print. I looked terrible in it - hunter orange does my skin tone no favors. It was clearly visible through the gown.

The parents tasked with whipping us into graduation submission cut their eyes at me, every one. I was pretty sure the assistant principal was going to explode. But no one could say a thing. The dress code didn't prohibit dresses that were visible through the gown.

I graduated.

Congratulations to the Class of 2026.

tip jar

home