When you hear a teenage girl was forced to wear a coat over her "indecent" dress through an entire dance, you're expecting booty baring action and OMG, can't miss it cleavage, right? So what if I told you that Promise Hammond's dress was tight but otherwise the kind of outfit I'd be proud to send my daughter to a dance in? Oh, and then there's this: when her mom tried to challenge the principal on the supposed dress code violation, he had her arrested for "trespassing"?
Can you say somebody has let the power go to his head big time? And folks, if there's any one place where a power hungry person should not get the top job, a school building is right at the top of my list.
But you see it all the time. You get the principal who makes decisions and then refuses to even meet with parents to back them up. You get the principal who ignores the requests from his own staff, the teachers who actually know their students. Surrounded by people who, because of their age, are naturally at a disadvantage, an administrator who thinks he's (or she's) the second coming has a whole building full of people to lord it over. You get the principal who decides, all on his own, that a perfectly appropriate dress is "indecent."
And that is exactly the kind of administrator who can be many a good parent's undoing.
Take Promise's mom, Life Hammond. After the whole dance dress code debacle (seriously, take a look at Promise's dress! It stretches well past the standard "longer than your fingertips" requirement. And, OMG, this scandalous teen even wore a sweet little shrug to cover her shoulders!), she says she went into the school to talk to the principal.
Now here's where stories differ. The school and the police say proper protocol was followed. A school spokesperson alleged that Life "invaded the principal’s personal space." The mom, on the other hand, said she was doing school business, and she feels she has the right to lodge a complaint about a principal's action.
Who knows. They haven't adjudicated this case yet.
But either way, I get where Life was coming from. A principal makes a ridiculous call about your kid, and you want answers! You deserve answers! And all too often we have administrators who hide behind the "I have too much to do" excuse to avoid parents.
Do they do a lot? Yes. I don't envy them all the paperwork. But at the end of the day, if you're in charge of a school, you're in charge of kids' lives. And that means you make time for parents, and be willing to back up the decisions you made regarding their child. Don't like it? Get out of education.
What do you think? Have you had trouble with your kid's school administrators?
Image via -Marlith-/Flickr
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Comments 20
Who's to say "sweet little Promise" didn't take off her shrug during the dance? Just because she looks decent in the video, under her mother's supervision, doesn't mean she stayed so pristine at the dance...
Life and Promise?
I'm on the principal's side.
Yeah it's a little tight, but honestly I have seen WAY worse than that.
If she kept the sweater on, I don't see a problem.
I don't see a problem with the dress at all.
Shrug or not I don't see the problem. I wore tighter things to my school dances. And in the video where it shows her friend's black and blue dress, her friend is next to someone in a strapless leopard print dress with no shrug on so how is that better than what Promise wore? at least she covered her shoulders, which in honestly I don't see to be that huge of a deal and at least when she danced she wouldn't be falling out everywhere. She wore/chose a dress that looked good on her body. But my main issue is the trespassing. Since when is a parent going up to their child's school considered trespassing? Isn't that a right as a parent?
Aside from having an ugly color combo going, the dress was NOT inappropriate. Not even close. In better colors, she would've gone from pretty to stunning.
I think the principal needs to move into a different job. Someone is getting off on their power trip.
These days schools are filled with idiots; students, teachers, principals, you name it! What's wrong with people these days? Dress codes are fine. Super-short skirts, tops that show half the girl's chest and any type of clothing that reveals students' underwear (bra straps don't count) should not be allowed. But this is ridiculous! It's not just this case, but many others. You see articles about students being punished because their shirts (not school shirts that are part of a uniform; normal shirts like t-shirts and tank tops) are not tucked inside their pants, commenters above mention not being allowed to wear spaghetti straps... And these are the same people that turn a blind eye to bullying! This is one of the main reasons I'm going to homeschool my children.