The Washington Post’s Daniel de Vise on a bizzare initiative that makes it easier than usual for one high school’s student body to figure out who to beat up.

Students at Montgomery County’s largest high school are in an uproar over a new policy that requires them to wear color-coded IDs — black for seniors, white for magnet kids and a particularly loud shade of yellow for students of limited English proficiency.

Ninth-graders at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring took particular umbrage at being forced to advertise their status with bright red badges and optional matching lanyards. Last week, after all, was Spirit Week, otherwise known as Freshman Hell Week. The campus has been thrown into a state of rhetorical turmoil over the IDs, issued two weeks ago in 11 colors to denote various smaller learning “academies” within the 3,000-student campus.

The new policy “tags us like dogs,” wrote Breton Sheridan, a junior, in one of hundreds of postings to various school Web sites.

Or, as sophomore Aisha Michael put it, “We look like Skittles now.”

At least three freshmen reported various forms of hazing: One was jumped at a bus stop; another was encircled by a menacing mob of upperclassmen; the third victim would not relate his sufferings in detail, Principal Phillip Gainous said.

CSTB’s source inside the school has confirmed that victim no. 3 was forced to listen to John Riggins’ call-in show.