Line #68 Main/SuddenSchoolUniform


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3	-->'''Miss Brooks''': It all started when the undergraduate body decided last week to be '' Let's dress up week ''. Contained within this malevolent Mardi Gras were such jolly daily fiestas such as; "Clashing Colours Day", in which anyone caught wearing an outfit that matched was severely punished by his or her fellow students; and [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin ''Dye-One-Leg-Of-Your-Trousers-Blue Day'', which is self-explanatory]]. By Thursday, which was "Girls Wear Slacks, Boys Wear One-Shoe-Only Day", Mr. Conklin, [[IronicNickname our beloved principal]], was fit to be tied. At a general assembly that afternoon, he sternly demanded that all these shenanigans cease.
4	--->-- ''Radio/OurMissBrooks'', "Dress Code Protest"
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6	In RealLife, if a school is planning a major change of DressCode, particularly if they're going all the way from [[NoDressCode "no shirt, no shoes, no service"]] to a strict uniform policy, they will announce it well in advance, seeking consultation from parents, teachers, the community at large if it's a public school, and often students, with any changes to take effect at the start of the following school year. (This applies to most other major policy changes, too. Schools are run by bureaucracies, and bureaucracy tends to move ponderously.)
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8	Not so in fictionland. Maybe the ReasonableAuthorityFigure has been replaced by someone [[TyrantTakesTheHelm less reasonable]], maybe the principal just snapped, maybe it's coming down from above, but the fictional school now has uniforms. With a day's notice, a week's notice at most. The resolution of the episode will lead to them being abolished since StatusQuoIsGod, usually reverting to NoDressCode at all.
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10	Often found within a TyrantTakesTheHelm plotline and AntiSchoolUniformsPlot. Primarily seen in American series, since it needs, on the one hand, a serial medium, such as television, and on the other a cultural backdrop in which school uniforms exist as an option [[note]]''Technically'' they aren't an option in the United States, at least for traditional district-run public schools, but there are ways of getting around this in RealLife, and fiction writers, of course, are free to ignore all of it[[/note]] but are the exception rather than the norm. This is something of a compressed variant of HollywoodProvincialism since ''most'' [[JuniorHigh middle schools]] in UsefulNotes/LosAngeles have uniforms but they're ''far'' less common at both the elementary and HighSchool level. SubTrope of DressCode. See also ForcedIntoTheirSundayBest.
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13	!!Examples:
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15	[[foldercontrol]]
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17	[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
18	* Happens within one day in ''Anime/PantyAndStockingWithGarterbelt''. In the episode "Les Diaboliques", Scanty and Kneesock take over the school and enforce school uniforms along the lines of their own militaristic clothing, on a school that before was a riot of varied outfits. The school seems to snap back to how things were at the end of the episode, as [[spoiler:Scanty and Kneesock are defeated by Panty and Stocking and they are forced to leavel]].
19	* ''Manga/RanmaOneHalf'' had something similar with principal Kuno introducing a mandatory hairstyle (or trying to) in addition to the existing uniforms.
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22	[[folder:Comic Books]]
23	* ''ComicBook/ArchieComics'' had a story arc revolving around this.
24	* ''ComicStrip/ForBetterOrForWorse'': Sometime between Elizabeth’s graduation and April’s first year, the unnamed high school introduced uniforms. Nobody protested this, but April exploited a loophole to incorporate rainbow striped socks.
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27	[[folder:Film]]
28	* Invoked as a minor running gag in ''Film/HarryPotterAndTheOrderOfThePhoenix'', where the first thing we see Dolores Umbridge do after being appointed Headmistress of Hogwarts is her marching around the corridors magically rearranging all the pupil's uniforms until they are up to military standard.
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31	[[folder:Literature]]
32	* Averted with the Eric Walters book ''Branded'', where school uniforms are announced early in the year after the bureaucracy has already decided on them and are phased in over a couple of months.
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35	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
36	* ''Radio/OurMissBrooks'':
37	** In the television episodes "Lulu, The Pinup Boat" and "Hello Mr. Chips", Mr. Conklin demands that the students and faculty wear sombre clothing. In "Lulu", it's to observe national education week. In "Mr. Chips", it's in honour of a visiting British headmaster.
38	** To a far greater degree in the radio episode "Dress Code Protest". An angry Mr. Conklin orders it on the spur of the moment, as Miss Brooks related in the OpeningNarration:
39	--->'''Miss Brooks''': It all started when the undergraduate body decided last week to be ''Let's dress up week''. Contained within this malevolent Mardi Gras were such jolly daily fiestas such as; ''Clashing Colours Day'', in which anyone caught wearing an outfit that matched was severely punished by his or her fellow students; and [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin ''Dye-One-Leg-Of-Your-Trousers-Blue Day'', which is self-explanatory]]. By Thursday, which was ''Girls Wear Slacks, Boys Wear One-Shoe-Only Day'', Mr. Conklin, [[IronicNickname our beloved principal]], was fit to be tied. At a general assembly that afternoon, he sternly demanded that all these shenanigans cease.
40	* ''Series/ICarly'' had this when Principal Franklin was kicked out.
41	* ''Series/{{Degrassi\|TheNextGeneration}}'' played this straight with the implementation of uniforms over Christmas break without prior discussion, but subverted it by keeping the new dress code in place for a year in-story (half the 10th and the entire 11th season).
42	** They also did an episode centered around kids having to still wear parts of it because their families couldn't afford to replace serviceable clothes.
43	* ''Series/LittleHouseOnThePrairie'' did this when Mrs. Oleson took over the school. It's possibly the [[UnbuiltTrope earliest example]] and memorable because the school board ignored a '''glaring''' conflict of interest in the part-owner of the only clothing and dry-goods store in town, forcing parents to buy additional clothing.
44	* The series of ''Series/TenThingsIHateAboutYou''.
45	* ''Series/ShakeItUp'', "Protest it Up". [=CeCe=] lets out a BigNo in response, but Gunther and Tinka have great amounts of extra time and energy when they're not planning out over-the-top outfits on a daily basis...
46	* Not a "school" uniform as such, but the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "The Chain of Command" has got this trope in all other ways. A new guy comes in and replaces Picard as the captain of the ''Enterprise'', and one of the things he changes immediately is in ordering Counsellor Troi to start wearing her duty uniform (Troi had spent the previous six years wearing a variety of informal style leotards and dresses). It's one of a number of things designed to show us that the new captain is a very different guy to Picard.
47	* In the TV adaptation of ''Film/{{Clueless}}'', the season one episode "The Party's Over" sees the school gain a new principal, who is disgusted with what he saw as the students' lack of discipline. His decision is to institute uniforms overnight, leading to Cher having imaging the school becoming a place of robotic clones. [[spoiler:The episode ends with Cher reworking the "I Have A Dream" speech into a speech about individual freedom with the principal conceding he was wrong.]]
48	* In ''Series/HowToRock'' the principal does this in response to Kacey and Molly's attempts to out-over-the-top each other leading to his being physically injured by their hats. He specifically called out Kacey and Molly for bringing it down on the whole school and when he relents at the end of the episode [[spoiler: the two of them still have to wear it.]]
49	* In ''Series/WizardsOfWaverlyPlace'' this happens as an act of enforced discipline that was misdirected.
50	* ''Series/ThatsSoRaven'' had an episode. Raven organizes a protest (everyone is supposed to technically wear the uniform but in a highly personalized way), but everyone backs out except the mean clique. The plot of the episode is more about Raven accidentally falling in with them, but it does follow the trope.
51	* ''Series/AndiMack'' did a sidelong glance off this trope when the new principal starting to enforce an already-existing but long-ignored dress code, with absolutely zero prior warning.
52	* Creator/TonyDanza 's ''Teach'' documented a rare RealLife example in which Northeast High School in Philadelphia implemented a uniform policy in November of 2009, in the middle of a deep recession mere weeks after families had done their back-to-school shopping with a free-dress policy in mind. Unlike most fictional examples it remains in place over a decade later.
53	* ''Series/SexEducation'': New headmistress Hope Haddon enforces a school uniform and a strict dress code to help curb the students' rebelliousness. Of course, they react with horror.
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56	[[folder:Webcomics]]
57	* This routine happened in ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive''. Principal Verruckt of Moperville North High School decided to have all of the students wear uniforms (apparently without consulting with parents, the local school board or anyone else) and put the policy into effect almost immediately. It's also a splendid example of WebcomicTime, since the policy was in place for less than a week InUniverse but covered ''3½ years''' worth of strips (most of which was taken by the birthday party arc). In the end, despite Susan opposing the policy because of the sexism in insisting female students had to wear skirts, what actually brings it down is parents complaining about extra laundry.
58	* The school in ''Webcomic/OzyAndMillie'' introduced uniforms, because the principal thought it would enforce conformity, and unlike most of his plans to do so, the school psychologist didn't try to talk him out of it because she felt that the "fashion hierarchy" amongst the kids was a problem. Then, just as it ''did'' seem to be reducing the amount of bullying and verbal abuse, the principal changed his mind because that trend in education was over (with the psychologist snarking that she thought the policy was meant to ''discourage'' obsessively following trends). Then he brought it back again a few weeks later, then finally decided that they just had to be worn on assembly day and school picture day.
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61	[[folder:Western Animation]]
62	* ''WesternAnimation/DannyPhantom'': Vlad Masters, the newly elected mayor, makes this a rule at the local high school, specifically to annoy PerkyGoth Sam since she's a close friend/sidekick to Vlad's ArchEnemy, Danny.
63	* ''WesternAnimation/MyGymPartnersAMonkey'' had the episode "Uniformity", where Charles Darwin Middle School instates a prep-school uniform that causes everyone to act uncharacteristically genteel and proper (read: boring), in stark contrast to the students' usual antics. The uniform was instated in about a week and later revoked in less than a day.
64	* ''WesternAnimation/PepperAnn'' once deconstructed this. While the school ends up relenting the uniforms at the end of the episode, the students think the uniforms are cute, and still wear them casually in the end.
65	* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''. The school uniforms were abandoned when the gray dyes ran to a tie-dye look in the rain.
66	* Averted in Disney's ''WesternAnimation/{{Doug}}''. The plan is announced at the beginning of the episode. Over the course of the episode, the student body collects signatures on a petition, forms an interest group, sets up protests, and eventually splits based on a difference of opinion. By the end of the episode, the student body has accepted the imposition of school uniforms but because the adults can't decide on a design, the plan is put on hold until the next year.
67	* ''WesternAnimation/TheKidsFromRoom402'': Mr. Besser once made the students wear uniforms. The decision was short-lived because the uniforms prevented him from pinpointing culprits whenever somebody broke a rule.
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Context Main / SuddenSchoolUniform