Lately mornings have been around 30 degrees, give or take a couple (but mostly take). Snow dusts the ground and ice covers my car so entirely that I’ve got to start defrosting it about twenty minutes before I leave, and opening my left rear door is literally impossible. Christmas junkies have been listening to “Deck the Halls” for about three months now, and Snowcoming is next week. Fall has begun to descend into winter.

And yet bucket hats are still a fad.

Bucket hats, generally floral and seen on tropical camera-toting tourists with noses covered in sunscreen, have been a common staple for Liberty students this year. Some of the worst offenders are football boys and hipsters, coming to school in the interestingly-patterned hats day after day, regardless of the weather that could freeze lava.

So, why do they do this?

“It’s a different type of look,” senior football player and bucket hat aficionado Nate Jarvis said. It sure is, given that the rest of the student body is pulling out their knit beanies and snow caps. However, one must admire the sense of fashion that these students adhere to, even when the weather is against them.

High school is all about finding yourself and what defines you, and sticking to that whether it’s cool or not (or, in this case, whether it’s hot out or not). So I say props to you, bucket-hat-wearing-kid, for finding something that you like and keeping with it. Not only are you stylish, but you also show the rest of us what self-expression truly means.