I went to University High School in the early 1960s and hated the place. To cut school, I'd usually walk past the principal's and vice principal's offices, past the attendance office, glance up at the fine Art Deco white-on-navy-blue neon sign advertising adult education, walk down the long diagonal path that juts out the double front doors and into the streets of West Los Angeles. Trotting straight out under the noses of the gatekeepers was both daring and successful for its improbability. After all, I was a Good Girl. The only other way out was through the students' parking lot in back, a hangout for the juvies with high-maintenance hairdos (boys and girls), girls with thick makeup and thin clothes and guys with switchblades (or so it was said). My mother and I had a deal: I'd call her when I was cutting school and let her know where I'd be, so if the school called, she'd cover. All this, as long as my grades were decent. A good deal.
Both Sides Now
Three Decades After Graduating From Uni High, Karen Michel Returns to Find That Her Alma Mater Has Changed--and Stayed the Same. Students Still Bridle at Dress Codes, but Their Fears Are Different From Those of the '60s.
INSIDE STORY
Uni Hi was and is enclosed by a tall chain-link fence. When I went there, student "guards" wearing sashes were deployed at each gate, barring exit. These were our peer police. Now Uni, like every high school in the Los Angeles Unified School District, has its own gun- and billy-club-toting school district police officer. But, except for a recent undercover drug bust--as part of the Los Angeles Police Department's continuing districtwide School Buy program--the Law According to Uni is dispensed mostly by a quasi-cop staff member.
Robert "Rob" Eiseman, 38, started teaching science at Uni in the early '90s. Now his title is dean of students; he calls himself, more accurately, "dean of discipline." "I'm being punished by God right now," he says. The dress code is one of the policies Eiseman enforces. Among the provisions: no visible underwear and no hats other than Uni hats. The latter is to help keep Uni "gang neutral."
When I was a Uni student, there was a no-hat rule, too--one I frequently violated with a beret. Then, in that beatnik to hippie cusp, the rule was probably to keep the school "Bohemian neutral." The girls' vice principal, a Miss Feutzer or some such pre-Ms. name, kept calling me into her office for the hat infraction, also for showing cleavage, though she certainly had an ample display. She kept too much track of my doings in general, criticizing me for wearing too much black, having college-age if not always college-attending boyfriends, for writing plays about Sacco and Vanzetti and for my presentation on the Wobblies--with song, no less--for a U.S. history class.
