What's the stupidest rule your school ever enforced?

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At my high school, the administration banned the color and word “fuchsia” (kind of a purple-ish, pink-ish color).
For some reason, the senior class (year 12, the class one year above me at the time) had become obsessed with the color/word. They had taken to wearing fuchsia shirts with the word “fuchsia” on them. On a given day, you’d likely see a few dozen of these shirts roaming the halls with students inside them.
The ban came because, allegedly, somebody had made up a story about a Mexican hooker named “Fuchsia” (because that’s a Spanish name, right?) that was the supposed inspiration of the color craze.
So naturally, the admins banned the color and any mention of the word. Using the word “fuchsia” in any context, or wearing the color in any way was three days in in-school-suspension (during-the-day detention where you sat in a cubicle with literally nothing to do - you weren’t allowed to read, no schoolwork, or anything — just stare at the wall for 8 hours). Second offense was a week out of school suspension. Third meant you failed your year and had to repeat the grade.
So, the seniors started wearing other obscure colors with the name printed on the shirt. “Indigo” “Chartreuse” “Vermillion”. Every single one of these colored shirts had the name of the color, and the words “You can’t ban all the colors” underneath.
It was by far the dumbest ass rule I’d ever seen.
- Haha this is amazing and ripe for suing the district for a freedom of speech violation. Surprised it didn’t happen but sounds like the kids were just way smarter than the admins in that case.
  
  Well, anyone who makes a child (or any person) just waste eight hours of their life doing absolutely nothing in some room for wearing a color or saying the name of that color is most likely very unsmart and/or on a power trip.
  
  I’m gonna go with unsmart.
  Our principal got indicted for stealing money from the school. He was swiping cash from the concession stand register.
  Know how he got caught? He got busted by the security cameras he authorized the SRO officer to install because… wait for it… money kept disappearing from the concession stand register.
  This happened exactly one year after being quoted in the paper saying “Stealing in any form is wrong” after half of our football team was arrested for running a small-time counterfeiting ring.
  
  Schools are in loco parentis. Essentially they act as parents while children are at school. Children at school are not afforded all the same rights as normal citizens against the government. Like searches and seizures. School officials, in loco parentis, can approve for police to search a students belongings while the student is at school. Even if the student themselves tries to invoke their right to protection for unreasonable searches.
  Same with speech, as parents can "ban" words in their homes. Schools can ban and restrict speech as in loco parentis.
  
  That only goes so far with rulings like Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District and Safford Unified School District v. Redding
  
  Certainly. And those are great citations. I'm really glad you posted them so I could read into it further.
  While students don't lose all rights and protections, the concurrent opinion on Tinker does say that they don't have the full protection of the 1st.
- Banning words is so idiotic, because I have never seen it working. People will always just find an euphemism, then they ban that euphemism, people come up with another euphemism and the cycle goes on and on.

179 comments