Body piercing in high schools definitely isn’t a new subject to me. I have had many run-ins with my school administration about ear and other body piercings. Because of my multiple piercings in my ears, the counselor and the principle have told me before that I cannot have any body piercings. Under other circumstances, I might except that answer. However, since the school dress code does not touch on body piercings in the handbook they cannot say anything and therefore, I can have my body pierced anywhere that I want to and they cannot do anything about it.
Though I can understand the school’s view on things, I still have my own personal opinions. I know that the school worries about people bringing extra attention to themselves by having things like body piercings and tattoos, but I don’t really think that they have any business telling the students how they can and cannot dress. I can also see where they might think that the student runs a risk of getting the jewelry pulled out of their skin if they rough-house too much or if they aren’t careful. However, I feel that the student can make that decision on their own. My side of things varies greatly from theirs.
I feel that the decision should remain completely up to the student with the piercing. I also think that the students have the right to decided if the ring or jewelry interferes with their education. Personally, I don’t feel that anyone’s jewelry interferes with my own education. I know several people that have their navel, nose, tongue, eyebrow, cheek, and lip pierced and it doesn’t seem to bother any of them or their classmates and piers. Although I am on the side of the people who want to have the right to keep their piercings, I do feel that people can easily go overboard.
If I walk down the hall and see an individual of either gender that has multiple facial piercings and jewelry hanging all over their face, then I think that it would bother me. I think that a maximum of three facial piercings would still allow the student to look very different without attracting too mush attention. You could always get as many piercings as you want on parts of your body that doesn’t show in public. I know that the school board would never approve of a policy like that, but I think that it would prove much more acceptable than the one that we have now.
Right now, that policy strips us of our freedom to act and appear as individuals. They tell us that we cannot bare an access of skin, have body piercings, wear clothes with anything they consider provocative on them, and that we cannot sport anything that might appear satanic. Though I do not worship the devil, I have gotten into trouble before for some of the clothes and jewelry that I have worn. The next thing you know they will tell us that we have to wear school uniforms and we can’t even have our own jacket at school because they might look different from everyone else’s.
The second issue that I would like to discuss runs along the same lines as the first. I have a problem with my school’s administrators trying to tell me that I cannot have a tattoo in their school. Well, first of all, this school does not belong to them. It belongs to the school. Without the students attending school here, every one of them would lack a job. Even if they didn’t think that the school belonged to them, they would still try to prevent tattooing. However, I don’t think that this will ever happen, because they have no way of knowing if anyone has a tattoo or not.
Not to mention the fact that their very own policy on dress code says nothing about body art. Like the body piercing, I feel that this has nothing to do with the education of the students and I don’t think that it interferes at all. After all, tattooing plays a major role in other cultures across the world. having someone in the school with a tattoo could prove educational. However, also like with the piercing, you can go too far with body art. I feel that, once again, a maximum of three visible tattoos on the body would be sufficient. The tattoos would, of course, have to qualify with the rest of the dress code.
This means that it could not look offensive, promote drugs, sex, alcohol, cigarettes, chew, or anything else that interferes with the dress code. If they go along with the dress code, then I don’t see anything wrong with them. In conclusion, I feel that the administration needs to simply get their noses out of the personally lives of the students and let us live our own lives. If they can’t do anything about it, then they shouldn’t worry about. One of these days, if they don’t get their noses out of other people’s business, then someone ought to pierce that nose and make them feel really funny!
