Drawing on nine focus groups with secondary students in southern Ontario, we investigated secondary students' perceptions of, and experiences with, school codes of conduct and their application. While generally supporting the "big" rules such as no weapons, students engaged more critically with minor ones. We drew on Foucault's governmentality studies to discuss students' successful compliance. We evaluated students' contestation of the rules, rule-breaking as potential resistance, and rule breaking as a manifestation of students' desire. Although students challenge school rules, they are "already caught" within the dominant language that frames the rules and their top-down application, with little sense of themselves as potent political actors. (Contains 5 notes. Appended are: Focus Groups; and Compilation of Card Piles Students Created)