As a school that prides itself on tradition, it seems hard to understand why such a radical change to the uniform would occur during the school’s centennial year. Despite sharing the same plaid, pants and skirts together won’t maintain the continuity that the skirts do throughout the Upper School.

It’s not that we wish to seem ungrateful for the work that was put into designing and creating another option for the student body. The sentiment isn’t lost and is appreciated.

But, as administrators stated at the beginning of the year when the more stringent uniform rules were instituted, when we have so much option and so much variation within the uniform, we have nothing at all.

Pants contradict the revisions to the uniform policy that didn’t allow for Hockaday sports or club jackets and sweatshirts to be worn except on Fridays. Rules that were instituted in the hopes that Hockaday’s uniform would conform.

Even though we miss sporting our favorite sweatshirts everyday, it is true that the student body does look more united without them. Despite the fact that sweatpants are incredibly comfortable, they aren’t appropriate for the school environment.

And, while we understand that the administration wishes to be inclusive by catering to those students who wish to wear pants, we feel that the vast majority of Upper School students would rather preserve the plaid skirt as our staple piece of attire.

The introduction of pants into next year’s uniform options seems to undermine this principle of a student body dressing with continuity.

There already are three skirt options and three shirt options, and the fact remains that leggings are usually all that are needed to shield your legs from a Texas winter.

In our centennial year, it seems like a shame to lose what we have come to know and love: to see on dress uniform assembly days a student body consistent in blazers and plaid skirts. Something only to be undermined by pants  next year.

Part of what makes Hockaday great is its value of tradition, how some things within the gates of 11600 Welch Road never change. Pants are not part of the wardrobe that dressed this generation of students during their high school career at Hockaday.

This is not an outcry against change, but a plea for a continuation of the uniform as it is, as a uniform uniform. It is a request to continue looking down the hallways and see an uninterrupted sea of saddle oxfords and skirts, to continue the tradition we as students have always known and wish to continue.