17 Students Suspended From Remote Learning For Distracting Classmates With Their Bare Shoulders
By: Rose Burke
Tags: High School, Satire, Fiction, Humor

BREAKING NEWS: Just weeks after transitioning back to remote learning, a public high school in Manhatten expelled 17 students for violating their arduous dress code. Despite studying from home, pupils are still expected to adhere to the school’s clothing regulations which forbid the exposure of the chest, thighs, and shoulders.

Ironically, the suspended students are being punished with permission to ignore their alarm clocks, browse the internet at their leisure, and binge episodes of Schitt’s Creek on Netflix. However, rather than reveling in all of this free time they now have on their hands, the outraged students have chosen to protest instead. They claim that not everyone is being held to the same standards and have deemed the school’s rules as sexist.

One particular student who was expelled for wearing a tank top that school officials designated “too revealing” didn’t understand why they were being singled out. Heres’ their comment on the situation:

I wore the tank top because it gets so hot in my bedroom. My mom keeps the heat up, like, super high this time of the year. I can’t focus on my classes if I’m literally melting at my desk. Why does it matter what I wear in my own bedroom anyway? This is just the school’s way of perpetuating a patriarchy that has helped to suppress our gender for centuries.

While the school has ignored our requests for comment, their official dress code as posted on their website states:

All MALE students are prohibited from wearing anything that might distract their female classmates such as:

Shorts leaving more than two inches of the upper thigh bare

Tops exposing the shoulders, collarbone, pectorals, side-pecs, or under-pecs

Shirts depicting words, phrases, or images that may be perceived now or in the future as offensive, cruel, grotesque, or satanic

Pants or shorts that fall below the waistline to deliberately show off the V-muscles

Tanktops or t-shirts designed to accentuate the nipples

Formfitting outfits that accent the hips, pectoral cleavage, butt crack, Adam’s apple, or calves

Clothing that doesn’t properly cover any undergarments including boxers, briefs, tighty-whities, bikinis, thongs, and undershirts

Dangly earrings and flashy jewelry that may blind others

Sneakers that add more than two inches of height and are designed to give the impression that the wearer is taller

Open-toed shoes that exhibit unkept, unmanicured, or disfigured toes

Neon-colored nail polish or makeup as well as any other ’80s trends that try to make a comeback

MALE students must also remain well-groomed and are forbidden from attending classes with:

Untidy or unkempt hair

Hats or headgear to hide untidy and unkempt hair

Hair length that falls between the earlobes and the shoulders

Unnatural hair color which means any shade other than yellow or brown

Beards that fall more than an inch below the chin

Outdated facial hairstyles including (but not limited to) a soul patch, handlebar mustache, goatee, mutton chops, the Van Dyke, and fu manchu

A second male student we spoke to broke down in tears as he told us he was expelled for wearing a white t-shirt. According to the student, a female teacher pointed out in the middle of a virtual class session that his nipples could be seen through the fabric and that it made her uncomfortable. The unnamed teacher recommended that the student wear an undershirt on a daily basis to resolve the issue.

“They humiliated me,” the 16-year-old explained to us. “If these girls are so distracted by a simple t-shirt, then maybe they’re the problem.”

While the affected students all admitted that they were aware of the dress code, they don’t feel the school has the right to enforce these rules while everyone is learning from home.

A student expelled for his boxers rising above his shorts called the whole ordeal trivial, saying:

This is a public school, we shouldn’t have these kinds of dumb restrictions on what we wear. I mean, I literally bent over to grab my textbook and I get expelled! From my own bedroom! It’s bullshit! Apparently, my shirt lifted when I bent down and my pervy teacher pointed out that she could see my boxers. Well, this is life and in life, your clothes don’t always stay put when you’re moving around! Now I’m out of school for the rest of the week, not getting the education I have every right to. Finals are in three weeks! We’re in the middle of a global pandemic! This is not the time to be suspending students over something so trivial. If these ladies are failing classes because my boxers or my shoulders turn them on, then maybe they need to be pulled out of school. Not us.

The discussion over boys continually getting singled out for their clothing choices while girls seem to get away with wearing whatever they want has been a topic of controversy for years now. This should come as no surprise though, as we’ve all been taught to objectify boys by the media and sexist societal norms.

By the time young girls hit puberty, they’re easily distracted by the opposite sex and rarely discouraged from harassing and assaulting their classmates. Schools seem to think the distraction is intensified when a boy is wearing something revealing or tight, so instead of teaching these girls that boys shouldn’t be objectified, they punish the boys instead.

Even though punishing young boys for dress code violations has shown to cause distress and low self-esteem, schools continue to use humiliation tactics to discourage clothing infractions. Schools like this Manhatten institution, for example, force boys to change into an over-sized long-sleeved prairie dress or a similar school-approved outfit.

When will the school administrators realize that these boys are too young to understand why they’re being viewed in a sexual manner by not only their classmates but by the teachers and school officials who reprimand them as well? It’s just another way public schools have failed our children.