Expert: Michael Troy - 12/1/2004

Question
I don't think it's fair for people at my school to dress like gangsters or wear all this provocative clothing to school and yet my school does not allow facial jelwery such as nose, lip, eye brow piercings, etc... I just want to wear my lip piercing with out having any worries of my school supervisers telling me to take it off, but yet they let other people wear all the provocative clothing such as the pentagram, girls half naked etc... I just say that isn't fair for people that want to wear body jelwery that aren't a distraction to others. Why is that?

Answer
Hi there,

Courts have said that schools have the right to place limitson things that are a distraction.  They give a fair amount of latitude to adminstrators to decide what is distracting.  Judges don't want to be second guessing every little decision a school makes, so they let administrators decide things that they might decide differently.

As a result, you often get decisions that may seem unfair or unreasonable.  It may be that the real reason for the rules is that the administrators just don't like the jewelry.  But if they can articulate other reasons in court (causes fights, risk of theft, etc.) courts will allow them to get away with it.

The real place such policy issues get resolved are on school boards.  If you don't like the policies, you need to work to elect new board members.

I hope this helps!
- Mike