At my high school, the head of the athletics department was one of those people where you give them a little power and they go power-crazy. I'll call him Napoleon. For gym classes, we were required to wear clothing that was different from our street clothes, and the two main rules were that we had to wear sneakers (duh) and we were not allowed to wear jeans. So one of my classmates showed up for gym wearing dark blue sweatpants that, at a distance, could be mistaken for jeans. Napoleon said loudly, "Are you wearing DUNGAREES??? Go change or you're getting detention." Who says "dungarees" ??? :rolleyes:

I did narrowly dodge a detention thanks to this same guy. My HS had just implemented a new computer system for attendance. One day, Nappy was out, and the substitute accidentally marked me absent. Since I was in school and went to all my other classes, I was flagged as having cut gym, and a letter was automatically generated and sent to my parents informing them that I would be receiving detention. (This happened a lot. Normally, a student would take the letter to the regular teacher when s/he returned, and s/he would sign off that the student did attend class and the sub messed up, and the attendance records would be corrected.) So I took the letter to Nappy and asked him to sign off, and he refused on the grounds that he himself hadn't been there and therefore was unable to verify that I had been there. So I spoke to the head of the women's athletic department (who knew me because I was on the track team) and she went over Nappy's head and signed off. No detention for me. And some serious egg on Nappy's face. :D

ANYWAY... if you've just had a detention or three over the course of your HS career, most likely that won't even be considered during rush. Now, if you were arrested and hauled off in handcuffs for bringing a knife to school (yes, this happened to one of my classmates), that could be a problem.

I guess my question is, though - would they even know about it? If it was minor, of course.

Probably only if it's on your permanent record and prominently displayed.

I asked my counselor about that and she said that on the college application, when they ask "Have you ever been found...of a disciplinary violation?"--if you checked yes, they will know because that disciplinary violation would have been on your record and you would have needed an explanation for the college.

If you checked no, it doesn't matter because it was not on your record.


Detentions aren't held against you because they aren't on your record. If you get in school suspension, suspended or expelled that's totally different.

So, they won't know because it's not on your record.