As president-elect of the Anacortes High School Associated Student Body in 1997, I got involved in the last stages of the creation of Anacortes High School’s Activities Code. The code is intended to regulate student behavior outside of school by denying students participation in school-sponsored sports and activities.
Despite my efforts at the end of the process, the document, written by a citizen committee on a tight schedule and without the benefit of a legal draftsman, is confused, lengthy, and self-contradictory.
The code is a draftsman’s nightmare. For example:
- Section IV of the code requires student academic achievement to be monitored “weekly every five (5) weeks” (emphasis in the original).
- Nearly half the code is simply a paraphrase of Washington Interscholastic Activities Association regulations. Since they’re subject to change, WIAA regulations should be incorporated by reference.
- The code includes the cost of the ASB card, which has changed since the code was passed.
- The code suffers from several circular logical errors, meaning administrators must simply make up the rules when the code doesn’t provide clear answers.
The purpose of these kinds of regulations is to give students notice as to what types of behavior the school expects, and what discipline the students should expect if they fail to meet those standards. This code does neither. The problems with the code, and the resulting uneven and unprincipled enforcement, have led to more than a few challenges over the years. Eventually, Anacortes School District will end up in court over it if it's not changed.
For my final project in my law school's Advanced Legal Writing class, I rewrote the Activities Code. My version is less than a third of the length of the current code, easier to understand, more coherent, and more precise. While I've submitted it to the Anacortes School District administration as a free update to their decrepit version, I haven't heard that they've used it.
You can download a PDF of my revised Activities Code or a PDF of the old code.