This year, the Upper School faculty wanted to start the year off with a strict uniform policy. This means everyone having skirts no shorter than three inches above the knee and wearing shirts underneath solid colored sweaters. However, truth be told, students are not very happy with this.
Ms. Weber has said that if we, as a community, abide by the rules and regulations now, then there could be some flexibility in the future. Students cannot wait to earn this freedom. However, rather than complying with the rules, many wear what they please.
Looking around the Hewitt Bistro at Upper School lunch at 1 p.m., it is hard to find girls actually in uniform. A girl at the salad bar is wearing a striped purple and white sweater, another at the frozen yogurt machine is wearing a cranberry Lands’ End sweater with no polo or oxford under it, and almost every girl in the room has a skirt too short to pass the notecard test (which the current freshman had to pass every day for one month last year in middle school.)
One of the rules that gets some Hewitt girls worked up is the denying of the Hewitt sports teams sweatshirts and shirts. Students don’t understand why this liberty was taken away from them, given that it had been a part of the dress code for years. Many argue it is a contradiction in our uniform policy, as we are allowed to wear a solid colored sweater, but not a solid colored sweatshirt with the word “Hewitt” on it.
Some say that we have paid too much money for these clothing items to be taken away, and that they represent the blood, sweat, and tears that Hewitt girls have put into each athletic season.
Abigail Knudsen ’12 stated, “Nothing is more rewarding than being able to show off my pride for the team I love and have worked so hard for. Without team gear, I lose a vessel through which I show my ultimate support.”
I have never imagined the rules would become stricter as I entered the Hewitt building with the double digit room numbers.