Back when I was in high school (in public school), chess caught on in a big way. Chess. It was the weirdest thing. It was a public school in a small farming town, and pre-Nerd Renaissance, so picture a stereotypical 80s or 90s school where jocks were top of the food chain--and then picture those same jocks in their letter jackets rushing to the library on their free periods to take turns playing chess. They set up tournaments and kept track of win/loss ratios and talked about chess strategies in the hallways.

So obviously something had to be done...I guess? The school started making rules and posting them around the school: one game per student per day. One game at a time in the lounge. No chess in classrooms or in the library! The chess board must be returned to the lounge supervisor between games, then signed out by the next person wanting to play--not just passed willy-nilly from one student to another! No outside chess boards allowed!

That pretty much strangled the chess fad. The jocks went back to stuffing nerds in lockers and sneaking out to smoke behind the school, and the chess boards returned to the shelf by the lounge supervisor, where they collected dust.

Problem...solved? The whole thing was pretty surreal.

"Zero tolerance" policy on fighting. Any "active" participation resulted in automatic suspension. That part sounds fine, but active participation included things like holding up your hands in self defense or trying to push the person sitting on your chest while punching you in the face off of you.

In 5th grade they defined every kid that can speak another language as ESL (English as a second language) even if you spoke English perfectly. Then they put all of the ESL kids in a different class on the opposite side of the school. The result was that the school became de facto racially segregated with all Asian and Latino kids on one side and all white kids on the other. It’s not like it served a purpose anyway since none of the teachers could speak anything other than English.

My high school had a rule about the "difficulty" of books you could read. You weren't supposed to read too high "above your grade". I assumed this rule was something with the school library and their Accelerated Reader program.

Nope! Tried to give me ISS because I was reading "Screwjack", which I brought from home. It wasn't even in class! I was a fucking junior. A high school junior should be able to handle Hunter S. Thompson.

According to them it was "college level" and therefore I shouldn't be reading it. My father raised absolute hell in that office. Don't think they tried enforcing that rule again.

They also tried bitching about girls tops until a group of very pissed off redneck fathers had questions about how they were touching the students to measure the width.

A couple got caught behind the high school. Girl giving the blowie was made to apologize to the school over the PA system and then "encouraged" to go to a different school where she would "fit in better". Boy got no punishment.

At my high school, the administration banned the color and word “fuchsia” (kind of a purple-ish, pink-ish color).

For some reason, the senior class (year 12, the class one year above me at the time) had become obsessed with the color/word. They had taken to wearing fuchsia shirts with the word “fuchsia” on them. On a given day, you’d likely see a few dozen of these shirts roaming the halls with students inside them.

The ban came because, allegedly, somebody had made up a story about a Mexican hooker named “Fuchsia” (because that’s a Spanish name, right?) that was the supposed inspiration of the color craze.

So naturally, the admins banned the color and any mention of the word. Using the word “fuchsia” in any context, or wearing the color in any way was three days in in-school-suspension (during-the-day detention where you sat in a cubicle with literally nothing to do - you weren’t allowed to read, no schoolwork, or anything — just stare at the wall for 8 hours). Second offense was a week out of school suspension. Third meant you failed your year and had to repeat the grade.

So, the seniors started wearing other obscure colors with the name printed on the shirt. “Indigo” “Chartreuse” “Vermillion”. Every single one of these colored shirts had the name of the color, and the words “You can’t ban all the colors” underneath.

It was by far the dumbest ass rule I’d ever seen.

I wish I could remember the specifics but my high school had an extremely ridiculous dress code policy at one point. Mostly targeting girls, of course, but also had weird shit like “no large/long coats.”

What I do remember perfectly though, is that a friend of mine and I, angrily pouring over the details of the stupid dress code, realized that capes were perfectly fine according to the code as written. So we both got huge capes and that was like a whole year of high school.

I always thought the no hats rule was really stupid. The teachers enforcing the rule was more distracting from the lesson than someone wearing a hat.

Forced to read and write about bible in public school, violating separation of church and state.

Our idiot principal for my first two years tried to come up with his own rule that shirts had to be tucked in. The written rule added the caveat "if it was designed to be tucked in". I purposely bought shirts that said they were not intended to be tucked in just so I could be a problem, and then made sure other people know which ones to buy.

A private school I used to go to banned Listerine breath strips, the ones you put on your tongue, because too many kids were using them.

No jackets. My school was using a wing of a building under construction as additional classrooms and you had to take a bus from the main building. In the winter you could not wear or carry your jacket around prior to your class in this building, so you had to spend your passing time visiting your locker to pick up your jacket and hope you make it to the bus in time to not be late to your class. The school was not small so I was frequently late or didn't wear a jacket.

I went to a private religious school and they made a rule that there couldn’t be any PDA (public displays of affection) between opposite sexes. And they ruled that pretty well with an iron fist.

So we took that in the opposite direction, and I don’t think the administration ever saw so much guy on guy slapping of butts, “Hey bigais”, or pecks on the cheek in their lives.

We lost five days due to a hurricane. Rather than adding 5 days to the end of the school year, they added 20 minutes to the end of every day or 5 mins to the end of every class.

No shorts, even when it's really hot and there's no AC.

So some older boys started wearing skirts.

They changed the rule.

My school strictly prohibits vehicle use, and considers all violations a strong offense that is on a three-strikes out rule.

Yes, it includes e-scooters and swan boats.

Yes, it includes whether you are in uniform or not.

Yes, it includes whether you are in school or not.

Yes, even if you are licensed.

Yes, it is enforceable anywhere.

The rule is obnoxiously blanket.

gender-based dress codes, especially haircuts and earrings. WGAF.

It's not enforced by my schools, but when I was little, speaking local languages at school was forbidden. It's getting better now, but at that time, only the official language was allowed.

Another rule was boys weren't allowed to wear longer hairs. If the hairline was below the ears, they would be asked to cut it shorter. From time to time, boys from my class were forced to cut their hair during classes with the company of a teacher.

No D&D in the halls during recess like seriously? Gotta love the "everything I don't like is witchcraft" period of the 90s

Not sure if it was a rule since I think it was temporary but putting a whole year level in detention because a few students from that year level broke the rule, that really passed me off even though my year level wasn't being punished for anything

This school didn't care about students at all with teachers stereotyping and playing favouritism

No listening to music during breaks. If you were caught with headphones on you without even using them, you could face punishment.

We weren't allowed to wear shirts with text on them. Didn't matter what they said; there could be no words of any kind on your clothes. It was some old ass rule that was still in the charter for the school or something from like 50 years ago, and one of those things most people just wouldn't enforce. My school enforced it, though. Fuckin VP would be out front every day turning every kid he saw with text on their clothes back home to change.

My school had a semi-loose dress code. Polos and button ups and the like. Also hoodies were allowed but what kind was usually based on the person who saw you in it. The one thing that never made sense to me was that girls couldnt show their shoulders. Wasnt an issue with guys, hell in weight training class guys and girls could wear tank tops. But anywhere else, even when school was out, the smallest amount of shoulder could get a girl wrote up. Even as a guy, this shit made no sense. It wasnt like some guy was gonna get aroused by a little shoulder so it didnt make much sense to play that “distracting guys” argument. And almost every teacher enforced this. My friend went on a long winded rant about it to me while waiting on the bus and ever since then its been confusing.

The dumbest rule that fortunately was only "tried" to be enforced was no gun racks in the student vehicles in the parking lot. This is was a rural area where for almost a hundred years people would have guns in the gun-racks in their trucks mostly. But with fire arm thefts etc it was pretty rare to actually have a gun loaded or unloaded in the gun-rack. Generally you'd just have the gun in the rack if you were hunting, or patrolling your ranch or whatever.

Then Columbine happened and suddenly gun-racks and leather trench coats, aka dusters, another extremely common piece of clothing in a rural ranching town were priority number one by reactionary's. Hundreds of otherwise lawful students were suspended, ticketed, arrested etc and finally after several months I assume someone had a "are we the baddies?" moment, and coupled with hundreds of lawsuits, the school system got a new superintendent and suddenly gun racks and dusters were back to being treated as the mundane items they are.