Spaghetti straps, crop tops — what to remember when enforcing school dress codes
School dress code attitudes are generational. Adults love them, while students hate them.
Young people yearn to be free, to find themselves and to express themselves. Older people would rather drop the drama and focus on securing the kids’ futures.
So adults come up with the dress codes under which young people chafe, and sometimes protest. And with years of time and experience, the young people mature into older people who suddenly appreciate the value of dress codes.
Who is wrong, and who is right?
Both are both, of course.
Abolishing school dress codes isn’t rational. Rules curb gang involvement and help to keep order — a priority in the educational environment.
Kids can wear what they want, or what their families decide is acceptable, for the 18 hours or so a day that they’re not in school, and on weekends and holidays and summer break. Wearing something appropriate for six hours on a school day is reasonable, and good practice for going to work as adults.
But adults can take rule enforcement too far. Kids are not criminals, and should not be treated as such, for pushing the same envelopes that adults did when they were young.
This preamble is a reaction to the recent flap in Turlock, specifically Turlock and Pitman high schools. A number of girls recently protested a district dress code by wearing tops showing tummies, and at least one received heavy discipline.
The Modesto Bee Editorial Board is not privy to particulars, and won’t take sides in this matter except to say a student-led attempt to revise the dress code is constructive and laudable. It seems appropriate also to remind school administrators of a few pillars of fair enforcement.
Mostly, educators must avoid double standards.
If rules ban midriffs, they must apply to boys as well as girls. Nothing screams hypocrisy as loudly as condemning a girl’s crop top while looking the other way as boys go shirtless.
The only way to avoid trouble is to hold both genders to the same standard. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
A similar rule should guide approach to body types. No one, whether skinny or curvy, should feel singled out. Body shaming has no place in our educational system.
If it’s true that student body members get a pass, well, that’s wrong, too. We teach our kids not to discriminate on the basis of race, sex, sexual identity, religion and whether they root for the Giants or the Dodgers — why would we excuse inappropriate dress just because the wearer is engaged in study body leadership? No more teachers’ pets.
Don’t sexualize dress code enforcement
Also, never sexualize students with enforcement. Disciplining girls while citing distraction to boys unfairly removes from boys responsibility for their thoughts and actions. Teach students accountability, not how to project their weakness onto others.
Lastly, administrators, please be judicious in withholding permission for seniors to participate in graduation. If students invest four years of their lives, in most cases working hard and qualifying in every other aspect, do you really want to shame them by preventing a walk across the stage for a bad decision late in the game?
Compelling any behavior by holding this over their heads teaches them a lesson about cruelty, not obedience. Seize the chance to teach them about grace and forgiveness.
Seniors last year paid an outsized price for no fault of theirs when graduations were altered or canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This year’s seniors, having persevered through distance learning, canceled or shortened sports seasons and extra-curricular activities, and the trauma of isolation, should not face one last indignity. Not if their sole indiscretion was engaging in nonviolent protest.
The kind that adults embraced when they were that age.