Wednesday, February 22, 2006
"Free are hoodies!"
Graffiti artists are a dime a dozen at Underwood High School. Look at any of my desks and you're almost certain to find a slew of four letter words, rap-inspired tags, and territorial markings belonging to any of several local gangs. Despite the official district policies against defacing classroom properties, students continue to scribble their marks on any and all available surfaces. Everywhere from the door of the mathematics office to the bleachers in the gym are crammed with jumbled masses of letters, numbers, and assorted doodles.
It is rare, however, that any of these markings have any broad political meaning or a coherent message of protest. (Especially without those four letter words I mentioned earlier!) Which is why I was startled, as I was cleaning up my classrooms after school, to discover the three word missive repated in this post's title scrawled upon the wall in the stairwell.
The slogan, as you can read, is relatively innocuous at first glance. It makes slightly more sense if you know that "hoodies" are how students refer to hooded sweatshirts. Unfortunately, with only that knowledge, it appears that our anonymous graffito is making a statement, not of protest, but of discount savings, albeit savings with poor sentence structure. After all, "Hoodies are free" would make a lot more sense if sweatshirts were being given away.
The truth of the matter, strangely enough, as with so many things at Underwood is the exact opposite of how it might appear at face value. For the hoodies are not gratis. They are not being distributed to anyone with any cost to either buyer or seller. Instead, they are being confiscated by members of the school's administrative team, who their latest ill-conceived reform effort have determined that the greatest problem facing the school at this moment, the sole obstacle preventing Underwood from being all that it can be both academically and otherwise, is student inability to follow the school's uniform policy.
Yes, like every other school in the district, Underwood has uniform policy intended to instill discipline and minimize the impact of designer labels. Khaki pants, black shoes, school shirt. That's it. Frustrated at the lack of creative outfit options however, students have this annoying tendency to come to school dressed in uniform and then change later in the day. Furthermore, the heavy winter coat and the hooded sweatshirt, which are supposed to be placed in students' lockers have become de facto additions to their regular uniform wardrobe. This leads to two regular annoyances in my classroom. First, because of the additional layer of insulation, students are always complaining about how warm it is in the building. It could be 10 below and students will still be asking me to open up a window. And heaven forbid I should suggest they take off the sweatshirt and winter coat before complaining about the temperature. That sort of suggestion is just insane.
The second issue is security related, and I confess it is far less of an issue this late in the year than it might have been around September. The problem is as follows: hoodies make it far easier for students to conceal their identity from teachers and security personnel, particularly if you watch on the cameras. This is the excuse the administration has given the students for the Hoodie Purge of '06 (my name, not theirs), which is intended to reassert some control over a school gone mad.
The strategy is as follows:
1. Extend homeroom an additional half-hour a day, making it a full hour long.
2. Send members of the administrative team around to the homerooms to check students are in uniform and if not that they have lockers in which to put the offending clothing items.
3. Barring a locker or in the face of resistance to the new order, students receive a suspension, have the offending garment confiscated, or some combination of the two.
When this plan was initiated, response was negative across the board. Teachers hated (and continue to hate) extended advisory because they are basically forced to babysit in their rooms for an additional half hour with little to no authority over the kids in their homerooms. (There is after all, no grade, behavioral or otherwise, for advisory.) Students were livid at the thought they might actually have to follow school rules and suspensions began to pile up as students refused to accede to the administration's wishes. One of my top chemistry students, who thanks to a solid extra credit response on her most recent test had a class average above 100%, got herself suspended and I heard a rather shocking string of profanity issue forth as she stormed down the hallway from her homeroom. Another student took it upon himself to start up the picket lines as in days of yore, marching around the third floor shouting out "Hell no, we won't go!," over and over and over again.
I have no idea if he was responsible for the grafitti I saw earlier today or if it was another similarly inspired student driven to express his discontent. "Free are hoodies!", or rather, "Free our hoodies!" was just one of a few slogans written on the walls these days. Another classic is "Give us heat or give us our hoodies," which I suppose is a more even-handed approach to the debate, though at the same time, the school is typically very warm with only the top floors suffering from cold temperatures consistently during the winter.
In any event, the school's leadership team, although inconsistent to the point of laughability with climate control initiatives, is very stern about grafitti in the hallways, where outside observers can see that it: a. exists and b. is unchecked by the administration, so it is a near certainty that within a week the offending marks will be gone. My bet is that after this week, so too will this uniform initiative, swept aside by the looming threat of standardized testing. There's a cyclical nature to these things. If you don't like the latest policy at Underwood High, or any high school throughout this crazy district, just wait two weeks. There'll be something new right around the bend.
Graffiti artists are a dime a dozen at Underwood High School. Look at any of my desks and you're almost certain to find a slew of four letter words, rap-inspired tags, and territorial markings belonging to any of several local gangs. Despite the official district policies against defacing classroom properties, students continue to scribble their marks on any and all available surfaces. Everywhere from the door of the mathematics office to the bleachers in the gym are crammed with jumbled masses of letters, numbers, and assorted doodles.
It is rare, however, that any of these markings have any broad political meaning or a coherent message of protest. (Especially without those four letter words I mentioned earlier!) Which is why I was startled, as I was cleaning up my classrooms after school, to discover the three word missive repated in this post's title scrawled upon the wall in the stairwell.
The slogan, as you can read, is relatively innocuous at first glance. It makes slightly more sense if you know that "hoodies" are how students refer to hooded sweatshirts. Unfortunately, with only that knowledge, it appears that our anonymous graffito is making a statement, not of protest, but of discount savings, albeit savings with poor sentence structure. After all, "Hoodies are free" would make a lot more sense if sweatshirts were being given away.
The truth of the matter, strangely enough, as with so many things at Underwood is the exact opposite of how it might appear at face value. For the hoodies are not gratis. They are not being distributed to anyone with any cost to either buyer or seller. Instead, they are being confiscated by members of the school's administrative team, who their latest ill-conceived reform effort have determined that the greatest problem facing the school at this moment, the sole obstacle preventing Underwood from being all that it can be both academically and otherwise, is student inability to follow the school's uniform policy.
Yes, like every other school in the district, Underwood has uniform policy intended to instill discipline and minimize the impact of designer labels. Khaki pants, black shoes, school shirt. That's it. Frustrated at the lack of creative outfit options however, students have this annoying tendency to come to school dressed in uniform and then change later in the day. Furthermore, the heavy winter coat and the hooded sweatshirt, which are supposed to be placed in students' lockers have become de facto additions to their regular uniform wardrobe. This leads to two regular annoyances in my classroom. First, because of the additional layer of insulation, students are always complaining about how warm it is in the building. It could be 10 below and students will still be asking me to open up a window. And heaven forbid I should suggest they take off the sweatshirt and winter coat before complaining about the temperature. That sort of suggestion is just insane.
The second issue is security related, and I confess it is far less of an issue this late in the year than it might have been around September. The problem is as follows: hoodies make it far easier for students to conceal their identity from teachers and security personnel, particularly if you watch on the cameras. This is the excuse the administration has given the students for the Hoodie Purge of '06 (my name, not theirs), which is intended to reassert some control over a school gone mad.
The strategy is as follows:
1. Extend homeroom an additional half-hour a day, making it a full hour long.
2. Send members of the administrative team around to the homerooms to check students are in uniform and if not that they have lockers in which to put the offending clothing items.
3. Barring a locker or in the face of resistance to the new order, students receive a suspension, have the offending garment confiscated, or some combination of the two.
When this plan was initiated, response was negative across the board. Teachers hated (and continue to hate) extended advisory because they are basically forced to babysit in their rooms for an additional half hour with little to no authority over the kids in their homerooms. (There is after all, no grade, behavioral or otherwise, for advisory.) Students were livid at the thought they might actually have to follow school rules and suspensions began to pile up as students refused to accede to the administration's wishes. One of my top chemistry students, who thanks to a solid extra credit response on her most recent test had a class average above 100%, got herself suspended and I heard a rather shocking string of profanity issue forth as she stormed down the hallway from her homeroom. Another student took it upon himself to start up the picket lines as in days of yore, marching around the third floor shouting out "Hell no, we won't go!," over and over and over again.
I have no idea if he was responsible for the grafitti I saw earlier today or if it was another similarly inspired student driven to express his discontent. "Free are hoodies!", or rather, "Free our hoodies!" was just one of a few slogans written on the walls these days. Another classic is "Give us heat or give us our hoodies," which I suppose is a more even-handed approach to the debate, though at the same time, the school is typically very warm with only the top floors suffering from cold temperatures consistently during the winter.
In any event, the school's leadership team, although inconsistent to the point of laughability with climate control initiatives, is very stern about grafitti in the hallways, where outside observers can see that it: a. exists and b. is unchecked by the administration, so it is a near certainty that within a week the offending marks will be gone. My bet is that after this week, so too will this uniform initiative, swept aside by the looming threat of standardized testing. There's a cyclical nature to these things. If you don't like the latest policy at Underwood High, or any high school throughout this crazy district, just wait two weeks. There'll be something new right around the bend.
