During the school year faculty began to see a violation of the student hand book. It states, “examples of unacceptable apparel include for both genders: Caps, hats, bandanas, hairnets, beanies, hoods, or other fashionable head coverings.”

Junior Cade Martin addressed this confrontation between teachers and students by starting a hat petition. The hat petition is to begin the movement to give students the ability to wear their hats during school.  It began in November and is now ready to take to the administration. The change Martin is aiming to make is to have the students be able to wear their hats during the school day. This new policy comes with guidelines. 

“We have a total of 12 rules right now. A lot of them are based off of the phone rules, and then we tried implementing other rules that were working for other things that apply to the hats, too. Such as being able to wear them in the hallways. This is similar to how some teachers don’t let you have food and drinks in their classroom but we can have them in the hallways,” Martin said.

Martin not only started this petition for the well being of the relationships of students to teachers but the mental health of the students. He believes the beneficial factor for letting students wear their hats would be an increase of their confidence.

“Hats are like a style statement. It could be part of someone’s style. Someone might not like the way their hair grows, or if they have a cowlick. That might boost some of their confidence being able to put a hat on and not having to worry about people looking at their insecurities of a cowlick or some bad haircut they got,” Martin said.

 Junior Bailey O’Neal also supports the petition. He says it can spread a positive message, and help students give support to things they are passionate about, such as representing their country.

“I feel it’s important because it lets kids show their pride, say they are wearing a USA hat or sponsoring a brand,” O’Neal said.

O’Neal also has the belief that it can have other positive consequences on the school. By letting students wear their hats it would eliminate the conflict between the faculty and students about them wearing their hats, possibly strengthening relationships.

“I think it will benefit the student body by students not getting mad that their hats got taken away, or getting told that they have to take off their hats,” O’Neal said.

Principal Bryant Bednarek has found a different idea of success with the petition. Having students challenge a school handbook written rule could be seen as a potential struggle, but Bednarek continues to see this with a positive outlook.

“I think success is having students being able to express their want or desire for change in a respectful and meaningful way,” Bednarek said.

Even though Bednarek would like to spend more of his time on other matters, he is still willing to give some thought to the issue. 

“I don’t want to spend time on things that don’t impact either one of those. So, if our kids can learn while wearing hats and stay safe and they’re not a distraction to others, I may be open to examining that rule further,” Bednarek said.