Use of "と" in a Easy NHK news article

I was reading an article and came across the following sentence.

“宮崎県の公立の高校や中等教育学校では、80%ぐらいの学校が下着の色を白と規則で決めています。”

I can figure out the sentence’s meaning from context, but this particular part confuses me:

“宮崎県の公立の高校や中等教育学校では、80%ぐらいの学校が下着の色を白と規則で決めています。”

What is “と” doing here? Is “80%ぐらいの学校が下着の色を白と規則で決めています” two phrases connected by と, and, if so, is 下着の色 not the object of 決めています?

Here is the original article, sorry for it’s weird topic lol: NEWS WEB EASY|「下着は白」は学校の規則に必要か 考えるように伝える

This is quite common when quoting.

I reckon と is quoting the text of the rule - i.e. the same as the speech marks used in the headline.

So for the quoted section, “80%ぐらいの学校が下着の色を白”, is there no verb for 下着の色? Is the adjective 白 fulfilling that role in this case?

There is indeed no verb here. Can’t give a proper answer for why but … :thinking:

This quotation particle と makes it sound like “the fact that so-and-so is white, is decided by the rules.”

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The quoting verb is omitted. It’s similar to how we say “the law that (says that) you aren’t allowed to steal” where you can omit the “says that” part.

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That makes sense, but even still I’m a bit confused as to why 白 is where it is in the sentence. Thanks to everyone in thread for the help.

To me it’s not so confusing, but I did just wake up (so maybe I’m not thinking straight)

下着の色を決める is the core of the sentence
白と marks what they decided the color to be
規則で means “as a rule” or “by rule”

This と is the same kind of と as in となる. We don’t have to get into how になる and となる are different here, but (noun)を(noun)に決める and (noun)を(noun)と決める is a similar set.

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