Hot Diggity Doo Dah! Dress Code?

Today is the day! It's our first day of school, sort of. Even though it's Sunday, we have a short afternoon schedule that is an orientation to our orientation week. It's a little bit like Hot Diggity Doo Dah at ISA (which is next Saturday by the way), with one great exception: a dress code?!

Ironically, I will be required to dress "nicer" as a student than I did as a professional teacher. Granted I dressed a tad more casually than most teachers on most days (personal motto: Putting the Casual in business casual since 1992). My most common uniform while teaching was cargo pants and a school-related t-shirt. My mandated uniform at the Clinton School will be slacks and a dress shirt and sometimes a (shudder) tie.

I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they haven't thought the whole dress code issue through. Below is a short explanation which proves why my dress code is superior in every way...

1. Pants with side pockets are more useful. They allow one to carry a wide variety of useful items: cameras, small notebooks, and snacks for example. And they allow one to carry these items unobtrusively and without the need of an extra bag, like a backpack or purse.
Pants without side pockets (might as well call them curtains) require one to buy and carry or wear extra items to act as pockets, like the abovementioned backpack or purse or, worse yet, sport coat. Blech!
When all of the labor and marketing costs of creating those extra items are factored in it's easy to see them for the terrible drain on our world's resources that they really are.

2. T-shirts allow one to support a cause other than the Monetary Distinction Between One's Fellow Humans.
The t-shirt is almost the lowest common denominator. It is the step closest to and moving towards the clothing proposed and modeled by Gandhi. That's right, you wouldn't catch Gandhi wearing a button down and a tie. According to the movie, he made most, if not all, of his own simple clothing from local materials. I recognize that as too radical a step for most folks, so I propose the t-shirt as a happy medium. In addition to being a more simple article of clothing it allows one to support causes. Some of the causes I regularly supported during my free-wheeling, t-shirt wearing, professional days were Heifer International, Invisible Children, PAL, and The Fund.

I could go on and on, but I feel certain you are already convinced and I don't want to delay you any further from going to purchase your very own pair of cargo pants and t-shirt.