Schools say students should act like adults. Then they treat them like children.

Why should an individual be deprived of an educational opportunity because of how they look? Essentially, that’s what’s happening to Tyler Pafford from Bullard High School. In response to Patti Gray’s letter (May 31), I understand the essence of following the rules, but I believe it’s about time we give these young adults a bit more freedom from the dress code.

High school students, like Tyler, are expected to act like adults but are treated like children by having a rather restricted dress code. To my understanding, adults are supposed to make choices on their own, some such as how they choose to dress.

I attended a high school in Fresno where we had the opportunity to choose how we wanted to dress because we were to be treated like college-ready adults. In no way did we fail to meet that expectation because of the lack of dress-code enforcement. In fact, the graduating class of 2017 had a 100 percent admittance to four-year colleges.

So, is enforcing a moderately strict dress code in high school helping or hurting our students from becoming adults?

This story was originally published June 7, 2017 at 3:24 PM with the headline "Schools say students should act like adults. Then they treat them like children.."