Asklemmy

We had very few rules in high school until a new principal came in during my senior year. We didn't even have attendance, as the school believed that it was the students' responsibility to succeed and graduate (it was a laboratory school, basically part of a college, so it was weird. It was K-12, and I graduated in a class of 25.).

This new principal comes in and lays down new rule after new rule, most were either ignored or caused enough uproar from tenured faculty and parents that he caved. For some reason, one day, he walks through the hallway and cleans out all the lockers, as well as picking up the unattended backpacks left on the floor. He takes ALL schoolbooks, notebooks, supplies, and electronics. Amazingly, he left some lockers alone, deaming them organized enough to satisfy him. They all belonged to his daughter and her friend group.

Then he takes all this stuff into his office, and proceeds to charge students $50 each to get school issued books back. He keeps all other supplies and electronics, announcing that he will have a sale at the end of the year to raise money for school athletics (which, being an extension of the college, had shitloads of cash to play with).

The University Police department showed up and were ready to arrest him for theft. It took nearly a week to redistribute everything, and he ended up in front of a local judge who was the father of a student.

Then he abruptly ended music, theatre, art, and home econ. classes by locking the rooms and firing the staff by posting signs that these were a waste and unnecessary strain on the school budget. All of the teachers were tenured through, and the classes and programs paid for by a combination of parent donations and a hefty amount of money from the university, which is well known for its communications, theatre, teaching college, and school of music (these are the programs that sell the university nationwide).

At the end of the year, during commencement, the University president made a speech that basically dressed down the principal publically, and then he announced that the principal was not taking part in the ceremony, and should go home as he would not be returning next term. The principal was in his robes, sitting on the stage, and waiting to hand out diplomas while this happened. The entire gathering of parents and students cheered.

And that's how a principal who thought he was going to be adored for "cleaning up" a school for the gifted like he was trying to run a drug riddled, inner city, school in the middle of Chicago, instead of school basically run by the students in a mid-sized University town surrounded by corn fields in Indiana.

My middle school banned Pokemon back in the early 2000s. It probably would have worked out for them if they didn't try to escalate things too far though.

Like at first you could bring a gameboy or the trading cards and play during recess. First they banned gameboys, then they banned the cards, and eventually we literally weren't allowed to say "Pokemon" or we'd get in trouble. I don't think they ever unbanned gameboys, but I think it took less than a year for them to walk everything else back and soon enough everyone was playing the TCG at recess again.

Not being allowed to sit on the ground. ..of girls wearing tanktops.

It wasn’t even a rule, but somehow I got lunch detention for losing a copy of The Two Towers with my name written in the front and not realizing they’d found it and had it in the lost and found. This was the same middle school that only had windows in the science classrooms (because that was legally required).

wdym in school or not. How can they regulate what you do in your own time. surely that must be illegal

My school only allowed us to use 5MB of internet per day, even though their connection was essentially an unlimited T1 line (1.544Mbps). This was around 20 years ago when a lot of people in Australia still had dial-up.