Hannah
Anyone who went to a strict school or had controlling parents knows that a lot of the rules you had to follow made almost no sense. People on Reddit are sharing dumb school rules their school had and the results are pretty insane.
As someone who went to an cult-y religious school until I was 21, I know these weird rules all too well. The high school I went to banned Ugg boots at their peak in 2008 because they “didn’t look nice,” and at university, even students over 21 weren’t allowed to drink alcohol off campus.
Don’t even get me started on banned books and pop culture like Harry Potter and Britney Spears.
It seems like schools can really just make up whatever they want and throw it in the student handbook. After all, how could we learn if someone next to us is in Ugg boots?
1. This should probably be illegal.
“We couldn’t wear winter clothing (jackets, hats, gloves) in class because they were ‘gang symbols.’ This was a small farm town in Wisconsin. Besides obviously having no gangs, it was fucking cold — even indoors — in the winter. But clearly wearing warm clothing is something only gangs do.”
— u/gouwbadgers
2. No time for lunch, no time for crime.
“They decided everything bad happened in the last five minutes of lunch, so it got five minutes shorter each year. Also, any group larger than five people had to be up to no good, so no groups over five were allowed.”
— u/handsthefram
3. Let’s teach them hand-eye coordination then.
“No fist bumps. The reason for this was that kids might accidentally punch the other person in the face.”
— u/Seagull_Friend
4. Where do they get these ideas?
“In grade 8, we were banned from standing in circles at recess because of potential scandalous activity going on in the middle. We stood in squares instead.”
— u/EchoLimaOscarDelta
5. Oh yes, the very sexy “hand hug.”
“Our school banned hugging because it was ‘erotic.’ As you can imagine, the boys at school started giving each other very sensual high-fives for the rest of the year.”
— u/la-z-boy4417
6. I bet that rule was removed pretty fast.
“No backpacks to class, but purses were allowed. Girls started carrying around purses big enough to be considered a backpack, and guys got pissed so they started carrying purses, too.”
— u/Gonenutz
7. How can I enjoy a salty Mountain Dew now?
“My middle school banned salt and pepper from being used in the cafeteria, claiming it was too unhealthy. They still sold Mountain Dew in the vending machines, though.”
— u/gcz1214
8. Good luck!
“I attended an all-girls high school. You had to bring a male date to dances or could not attend at all. No going solo or with your girl friends. So backward.”
— u/LilDonutOfficial
9. *laughs in Mormon*
“You got in trouble if you wore just a Hanes white T-shirt after school because ‘you were in your underwear.'”
— u/SocalGSC92
10. This is just lazy investigating.
“If you were involved in a fight, you got suspended. While it sounds reasonable, context didn’t matter. I got suspended once not for throwing a single punch, but because someone knocked the books out of my hand and punched me in the face when I reached down to grab them. Yes, I got suspended for walking down the hallway and getting punched in the face unprovoked.”
— u/CLG_MianBao
11. Pro tip: never get in the bed at all.
“My first-year dorm at a religious college had a list of rules that filled a legal-sized sheet of paper. It included being in your room for forced study time every night, keeping your towels straight on the towel rack, and making your bed by 9 a.m. every day, including weekends. So if you wanted to sleep in on Saturday morning, you were supposed to get up, make your bed, and then go back to sleep on top of the bed.”
— u/bigredcar
12. Those cancer ribbons could confuse people!
“We weren’t allowed to wear too many matching shirts, because we could be a gang. This was in regards to a kid with cancer wanting to make a bunch of shirts.”
— u/haydawg8
13. Wonder why.
“In my first year of high school, we had a terrible vandalism problem. The bathrooms would be broken in various ways almost constantly. In a stroke of pure genius, the staff decided that any bathroom that was vandalized would be closed for the week on first offense, the quarter for second, and permanently on the third offense. They took back the rule after closing every bathroom on day one.”
— u/Samus388
14. This sounds like a nice set up!
“Suspension was a punishment for skipping school. Don’t want to come to school? Well now you can’t, until next week.”
— u/hasallthecarrots
15. Good luck to anyone with a cough.
“We weren’t allowed to have cough drops in our elementary because the school considered them ‘drugs.'”
— u/daspyper
16. One poopy week and you’re doomed.
“We were all given these ugly planners at the beginning of the school year with a few pages at the back filled with ‘hall passes’. If you didn’t have your planner or if all your boxes were filled, you weren’t allowed to go to the bathroom. And no, you couldn’t buy a new planner or borrow one from your friend. The only excuse you had was a doctor’s note, but no doctor is going to give a note for an upset stomach caused by the school lunch.”
— u/Safe_Use4057
17. Sitting is how babies are made.
“A girl and a boy weren’t allowed to sit together. The school employed ‘disciplinarians’ to roam around and monitor this ‘activity.’ If found, you would get a reprimand, if it was a repeat offense, you got sent to the principal’s office, and if it continued, your parents were involved.”
—u/themorrigan86
18. Why do these people think children look like gang members?
“You couldn’t wear ANY kind of head items that were ‘gang colors’ (red or blue), including hair bands, scrunchies, beads in your hair, ribbons, ANYTHING. I got in trouble for wearing a blue hair band with white polka dots.”
— u/Pleasant-Flamingo344
19. and finally, “Only God is perfect.”
“We had percentage grades, and if you earned 100% in a class for the semester you would be dinged down to 99%, ‘because only God is perfect.’ As far as I know this was not an official rule and I only know of it happening once to the girl who eventually became our valedictorian, but that was the reasoning she was given. It was a Catholic girls high school and there were a lot of other weird, strictly enforced rules, but that rule will always take the cake for me.”
— u/kpteasdale