I’ve been stewing over this for a few weeks, but I still haven’t gotten over my astonishment over the news, so I decided to write a blog post. Please forgive me if this comes across as a rant, but in all honesty, that’s exactly what I’m doing here.

A few weeks ago, a middle school principal in Oak Park, Illinois decided to ban hugging in her school. Her rationale behind the decision? She claims that, “hugging is really more appropriate for airports or for family reunions than passing and seeing each other every few minutes in the halls.”

I may be slightly biased here (as even my job title on my blogTO business card lists my profession as “hugger extraordinaire”) but I firmly believe that banning hugging will have a detrimental effect on Percy Julian Middle School. Not only does this prohibition give students another, extremely-simple way to subvert authority—I can already imagine the tales of covert hugging groups assembling near locker 143—but it will also lead to long-term unhappiness and eventually, dissension in the school.

Here’s the bottom line: the simple act of hugging is by far the most honest and comforting action that exists in our emotional toolbox. (And I don’t mean those half-@ssed man-hugs here: I’m referring to real, personally-involved hugs.) The act of hugging is not only based on trust and openness, but also relates to humankind’s natural need for comfortable physical contact.

Let’s look at the actual mechanics of the hug: by opening up our arms, we expose our torsos to the person across from us, leaving the core of our bodies susceptible to incursion. The simple act of hugging is then inherently an act of trust, allowing another individual to have access to us when we are most emotionally and physically vulnerable. Similarly, the physical mechanics of the hug is an indicator of support and reassurance. The act of wrapping our arms around someone’s body is a tangible demonstration of the carrying metaphor: by “propping-up” someone’s body by wrapping our arms around them, we are telling them that we are willing to reinforce and support them anytime that they should fall. It is no surprise, therefore, that the hug is such a reassuring and powerful physical action.

Breaking away from the elemental physicality of the hug, the true power of a hug comes from its emotional investment. On the first episode of Pushing Daisies (my new favorite show on television), one of the character referred to a hug as an “emotional Heimlich.” The metaphor makes sense: the hug is the universal revitalizer, bringing people back to life when they feel emotionally despondent. A hug has the power to hold a multitude of expressions in one action: reassurance, support, encouragement, pleasure, love, sympathy, delight, empathy, understanding, cognizance, goodwill, concern, mercy, tolerance, and even pity. Because of this, I would argue that the hug is the most valuable of all outward displays of emotion: it has a wider usage than the kiss which is reserved mainly for expressions of sexual intimacy, and is much more involved than the simple holding of hands.

All that being said, I return to my original matter: banning hugging in a middle school will only lead to an atmosphere where basic human emotion will be throttled and strangled. Instead of prohibiting the hug, it would perhaps be more advantageous for principal Victoria Sharts to invest in better crowd-control and time-management education for her students.

But hey, who knows? Maybe principal Sharts is just in need of a good hug herself.