The Choice Channel

They are everywhere from football fields to hospitals. Throughout history from the legions of Rome to the doughboys of World War I they can be found. They can be found in all sorts of sizes, shapes and colors. What are they? Uniforms. Inherently there is nothing wrong with uniforms. They help define and unify a group of people. They give people a sense of belonging. A uniform can help you identify a store employee for help.

Yet, for all their usefulness there is a darker side to uniforms. They can be used to steal liberty. Recently I was watching the evening news I became appalled to see that a school district in the city of Scranton Pennsylvania is requiring their students to wear uniforms. What’s inherently wrong with that, you ask? I see a dangerous precedent on four levels.

The first dangerous precedent is that mandatory school uniforms reinforces the idea that it’s ok to lose liberty for good intentions. Secondly taking away the liberty of a voiceless and rather powerless fraction of the population is a dangerous precedent. The next problem is that you are teaching the students subtly that liberty is not that important. The last fundamental problem is that you are taking away the student’s freedom to choose what they would like to wear thus violating their constitutional rights.

The people that support school uniform have good intentions. They feel that uniforms will help poorer kids feel more at place in school. Kids will not spend as much time worrying about what to wear. Clothes (that are not uniforms) can distract the students in school. Each of these reasons is admirable in it’s own right for wanting uniforms. However, to let the government sacrifice people’s rights for good intentions are dangerous. Where do you stop? The school board could justify any action in the name of good intentions. The government could mandate prayer, bible study or studying an English guide to the Koran to fight moral depravity found in society. If local governmental institutions like school boards can get away with taking away rights in the name of good intentions where do we put our foot down? Where do we say enough is enough?

It’s easy to take the rights away of those who are powerless to stop you. Yet, whose rights need to be protected more? Those who know about them and can defend them or those who aren’t aware of them and are powerless to stop you. Students can’t vote. People rarely take students seriously. On the news program they had several parents giving their opinion for uniforms to one student saying that he was against it.

It’s a dangerous precedent to take away the rights of those who cannot defend them. There are many groups in society who cannot adequately defend their rights. Children, the mentally challenged, babies, people with mental illnesses and the list goes on and on. Are their rights any less important then yours or mine? It’s immoral.

Look at John Rawl’s concept of the “veil of ignorance.” The premise is that you have a situation, which you need to decide what to do. To make a moral decision you have to pretend you don’t know who you are going to be in the situation. So you make your decision not knowing who you will be in the decision. This ensures that you make a decision that ensures everyone is treated fairly.

Would any of us want our right to choose clothing or more fundamentally our right to liberty and freedom of speech taken from us? Another philosopher named Immanuel Kant believed that morality is based on treating people as ends not means. If you use a person to achieve an end then it is immoral. Using the students as means to achieve other’s ends or good intentions is immoral. We should not tolerate the immoral practice of taking away people’s right’s who aren’t able to defend them.

Mandating uniforms subtly teaches students that liberty is not important. The local school board is saying that there are exceptions to your liberty. I would agree that there are exceptions to your liberty. Your rights end at the point where someone else’s begins. However, uniforms are not being mandated to save someone’s rights. They are being mandated for good intentions. If a student accepts this notion that they can lose their unalienable rights to good intentions then won’t that carry on? They learn that rights can be overruled by the will of the majority. Rights can be sacrificed for the common good. That you are not born with these rights but that they are doled out at the pleasure of the government. Is that what the Declaration of Independence, US or PA Constitution state or our founding fathers envisioned?

The most dangerous precedent that mandatory school uniforms establishes is the violation of the student’s constitutional rights. Granted no where in either the Pennsylvania state constitution or the United States constitution does it explicitly say that students have the right to wear clothes of their own choosing. However, looking at both constitutions fundamentally the right to wear clothes of one’s own choosing is protected.

In the United States constitution the first amendment part of the Bill of Rights state’s that, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” The fourteenth amendment states that, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The first amendment protects freedom of speech. What clothes you wear are part of your speech. If you lose your ability to express yourself then you lose you freedom of speech. Clothes are just one more way of expressing ourselves. Students deserve to have their first amendment rights too. In fact they are guaranteed it by the fourteenth amendment. It says that states cannot make laws, which deprive citizens of their rights. By the definition of citizen in the beginning of the amendment most students would count.

School boards are part of the state government. The state government has given the school boards authority to run state mandated education programs in their districts. The Constitution guarantees citizens all their rights. States are not authorized to make laws to abridge the privileges of these citizens. The Pennsylvania constitution in its first article says the same thing. Its first section states, “All men are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent and indefeasible rights, among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, of acquiring, possessing and protecting property and reputation, and of pursuing their own happiness.” Wearing School uniforms deprives a person of the ability to enjoy their liberty, property or pursue their own happiness. The second section defends the freedom of speech just like the United States constitution.

What this all boils down to is that school uniforms in Scranton Pennsylvania are unconstitutional on two counts. To allow this great injustice to go on demeans everyone’s rights, not just the rights of the students.

Our rights are worth only as much as we are willing to protect them. Every time someone else’s are violated our own rights are violated in a way. If we do not protect the student’s rights who will be there to protect ours? What rights are you willing to give up in the name of good intentions if you stay silent on the rights of the students? Do we want generations of students learning that liberty is not important?

If the governments can violate their constitutional rights and get away with it, what is guaranteeing your rights? The time is now to take a firm stand against school uniforms. Oppose it wherever it comes up. Perhaps suggest to your local congressman a student bill of rights. If we stay silent as the students lose their right to speak, will we be able to speak out later?