‘Why can’t we have a dress code?’

The Dean’s Blog

‘Why can’t we have a dress code?’ asked a 10th grade boy randomly but with energy, as though I had just forbidden such a thing on pain of excommunication from the student body, as a few of us were chatting in the Bistro at lunchtime. This seemed like, ‘May we have some more rules?’ or, ‘Can you restrict our freedom further by telling us what we may not do?’ or ‘We want people at least 25 years older than ourselves to increase their criticism of us.’ But I recovered pretty quickly as it soon transpired that he really meant, ‘Can people who dress in a way we do not like be told not to?’ What these guys did not like, apparently, was the other gender in ‘scanty style’ when the sun was out. (Please see a recent Blog for comment on male sunshine scanty sartorial style.) I counter proposed a ‘Style Tuesday’ club where those participating would be so irresistibly gorgeous that everyone else would follow this new trend and the problem of flashing the flesh would evaporate. They did this. It lasted one week. The few looked good (but confused style with formality, so the ‘black suit uniform’ reappeared.) No one followed suit (sorry…). It was clearly not cool (see recent Blog on the Code of Cool.) The next Tuesday it had died.

Vitriolic abuse
School uniform or dress code is a secondary educational chestnut, good for vast lengths of noisy and opinionated verbal mileage from a wide range of participants, including, in the past, the Dean of Students. The topic has ended so many silences in staffrooms all over the world which might otherwise have lead to teachers getting home earlier. The topic can agitate and transform the usually retiring and liberal. I have witnessed insane, acerbic arguments for regulating the length and weave of girls’ white sport socks from an otherwise mild, mature teacherette who was usually only a little dinosauric.

Moral turpitude
The reasons for revisiting the debate were the same then as now: suitability to a place of learning, danger in a science/technology lab, distraction to other students in the fiery frenzy of puberty, an invasion of rights, a leveller of social and financial inequality, a pressure release valve for the parental purse, an opportunity for the developing teen to express individuality, an opportunity for staff and parents to be, as well as appear to be, in utter harmony and thus invincible, we are a multicultural all age school on a space challenged campus usw. Very recently, a couple of our primary children astonished by the exotic and bizarre older female garb as they made their small ways through the secondary labyrinth, asked their teachers if they could also come to school wearing only a T shirt and nothing else; this was referred to me as Dean. And at ICS in 2009 there are occasionally such discussions where, however, we would all have to agree that murky moral turpitude and vivid laboratory maiming as a result of unwise clothing decisions have not stunted the moral and physical growth of our young students. We have had dress codes. We still do.

Who will measure?
The problem is not just whether any of the aforementioned justifications for a point of view can be empirically founded. The problem is also enforcement. Children are far tougher than our generation and so the first draft from the Student Council contained draconian examples of acceptable limits and consequences. But is it three or four centimetres? And who measures? Who defines the frontier where the apparent implication and probable inference of a T shirt text is unsuitable? Who is going to provide the cover up shirt or jeans that are to be donned instantly by an offender? Where will they be kept? Who will launder them? Which budget will that come out of? The mire gets very quaggy now. Committees will get created and sub committees will break out to define issues of sub decency or sub safety. And this is before some bright student starts arguing human rights or asks why the teachers don’t appear to have a dress code.

No apoplectic outbursts
So we return, pro tem, to a generally agreed and generally accepted and generally applied interpretation of common sense. No big deals. No apoplectic outbursts. The extreme T shirt gets covered or turned inside out. The extremes of dress length, saggy pant revelation or spray on tights will be refused entry to the premises as from tomorrow and so on. And everyone goes away more or less happy. Until someone somewhere within hearing of someone else says something about someone that morning who correlated a glance at the weather with the content of the clean section of their wardrobe and ‘like, turned up at school looking whoah...!’

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