We assume that when schools make rules they make them with good intentions. For example, when a school makes dress code rules they might decide to ban certain items of clothing that could be distracting or offensive. In some cases, schools go too far and ban things that don’t even make sense.
A dress code is certainly not the only rule students and teachers have to follow. There are also rules about what types of absences are acceptable and what you can and can not do while on school property. Again, sometimes these rules make sense, but other times they are taken to the extreme.
Reddit user SoLe123456 asked, “What’s the dumbest rule your school ever enforced?” The answers are mainly humorous, but in some cases they’re a little bit sad. Sometimes the school realized the rule was dumb and changed it. Other times, the rule was enforced no matter what.
Scroll down to discover some truly bizarre rules that schools actually enforced.
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Three Staircases
Reddit user bignastty wrote:
my school had 3 staircases along a very long corridor. we were banned from using the middle staircase because it got overcrowded. the ban was lifted once they realised it only made the other two staircases just as crowded
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Freeze or Wear the Logo
Master_Catch_9089 shared:
Not being allowed to wear hoodies/jackets or sweaters that lacked the official school logo.(I was a high school teacher for several years, both buildings I worked in were FREEZING, and having admin pull students out of my classroom during a 50 minute period & giving them detention instead of letting them LEARN is cruel and completely unnessesary, in my opinion).
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Detention
MrFake_Name answered:
If you throw snowballs, you get a one day suspension. The first long weekend after a snowfall everyone would throw snowballs to get an additional day added to the long weekend.
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Student ID
the-zoidberg shared:
You had to wear your ID around your neck on a rope thing.Then the chokings started.
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No Talking
passatcar wrote:
Elementary school principal banned talking at lunch. If you were caught talking or even signing to someone, you had to go sit by yourself on a folding chair with no table.There was once my mom came to eat lunch with my older sister and I. The principal was like ” Oh you should go eat out in the hallway with your daughters” and she was like “nah, I’m gonna sit here with my daughter and her friends and talk to them and enjoy their presence” (usually if a parent came for lunch the student could invite one friend to join, unless you had siblings. Then it was too many people so you couldn’t invite a friend). Anyway, one of my older sister’s friends whispered to my mom that she was going to move so she wouldn’t get in trouble for talking. THIS WAS A NINE YEAR OLD.
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No Skipping School
Lump_Constellation shared:
I got Saturday school for missing a day of classes when I was 16. Seems reasonable, except I missed to go complete my US citizenship and officially become a citizen alongside my mom (it took us 12 years to go through the legal process, btw. Whole other issue). I had a note from my mother as well as a signed official Federal form they give you to explain to school/employers why you were absent. Apparently the only acceptable absence excuse was illness. I got punished for becoming a citizen
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Bullying
wowthatfood explained:
That if you say/do anything back to your bully it becomes a mutual conflict and isn’t bullying, so if they start calling you slurs and making you feel bad every day and you call them stupid once or twice the school probably won’t help.
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“Morning Round-Up”
LiveTrash added:
The new Principal made a “morning round-up” rule where anyone arriving to class after the last bell had to go to the cafeteria and listen to a lecture about not being late for class. This took about an extra 15 minutes, making the students even more late to class than they would have otherwise been. Needless to say, everyone hated it, even the teachers. That principal didn’t last long…
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Hand Over the Toilet Paper
stabbyspacehorse wrote:
Toilet paper rationing. This was in 1997/98, btw. Apparently the high school girls room was going through too much toilet paper so the dean, a woman, stood outside the door and distributed a few squares of 1-ply institutional toilet paper to us as we went in. If she noticed toilet paper on the floor, our ration got cut down. If we asked for more for…bigger jobs…we were told to saved it for home.There were several episodes of girls stuck in stalls until friends could beg for more TP because of period messes or unexpected bowel incidents. The dean wouldn’t even hand it over–she would go in the bathroom and pass it a few squares at a time over the door. If you didn’t catch it as it fell and it landed on the floor, well, that’s your fault and you’re not getting more. If you used more than she thought necessary, tough luck, go to class with blood/shit on your body. It took about a week of extremely angry parents coming to the school and calling both the school and the school board, but we finally got our toilet paper back, unlimited. How did we celebrate? By TPing her car, of course.
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No Stubble
Captainbuttsreads shared:
We were not allowed to have facial hair at all.Like to the point where the principal would walk around during lunch with razors and shaving cream and do “Stubble checks”. Absolutely ridiculous and he would send tons of us to the bathrooms to shave during lunch, no matter how small the stubble was.
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Look Happy
HitchhikingCats explained:
At my kids’ elementary school students had to smile while walking in the hall.
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Tag Is Not Allowed
BeverageBeast answered:
Went to school during the time where health and safety suddenly started going crazy, they introduced a “no contact under any circumstances” rule i.e no touching another person, we were like 6 or 7 years old. Suddenly one day not only is tag suddenly illegal, but they actually enforced it, I remember one day like 70% of the schools population was pulled off of the playground and made to sit on the floor in the hall, for the crime of just playing the games that children play.
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I Need a Hall Pass
Another Reddit user wrote:
We once had a rule that we could only go to the bathromm during class. Not in the breaks. Only during class.