Mrs. Lytle's 7th grade English classes were assigned a persuasive paper. Mrs. Lytle said that she wanted them to "be able to express their opinion effectively."

All of the students were required to persuade their readers to be for uniforms or against uniforms. The students were not allowed to choose which side they wanted to support. Topics were assigned by their teacher.

After the students wrote their papers they voted on the best one from each side.

Hannah Gardner won for arguing for uniforms, and Colleen Casner won for her paper arguing against uniforms.

Hannah Gardner argued that "popularity is now based on what you wear." She believes that wearing uniforms helps to deal with this problem. Gardner says, "We can spend more time on things that are more important rather than choosing what to wear, or going shopping."

Gardner "feels as if uniforms unite all DCA students," later going on to state that uniforms "train us to dress appropriately for our future careers."

Gardner's last point in her paper is that because we wear uniforms everyday, dress down days are "special and enjoyable." She says, "I am appreciative of the decision the administration made to implement school uniforms."

Colleen Casner claimed that the uniform rule came about because "some of the high school girls had been wearing inappropriate clothing such as short shorts and pants with writing on the back. Their actions caused the school to issue a new rule in which the whole school had to wear uniforms! The new rule applied to everyone, whether they had dressed inappropriately or not."

Casner also argues that "several DCA classes are in the portables, while the lockers are in the main building." She says that the students have to walk outside to access their lockers "even when it's cold." She claims that "The uniform company doesn't make coats so most people can't wear one."

Another argument that Casner includes in her paper is the fact that uniforms do not completely solve the dress code problems she mentioned earlier. "A lot of the girls shorten their skirts to more than three inches above the knee."

She argues that uniforms "cost more than most other clothes. There are also various clothes besides uniforms that are appropriate."

Casner's final argument is that "pupils do not have a wide range of school clothes to choose from. When they graduate from high school, some of them might not know how to buy school clothes because choices have always been provided for them through uniforms."

Both students used solid persuasive techniques in their arguments.