School Year off to a Great Start!

When I was in elementary school many years ago they made a boy wear a hair net all day because his hair was "too long." He went home crying. His mother came to school the next day and went up one side of them and back down the other.

My brother, massive square, grade-A student, was bollocked for daring to put gel in his hair. This was a few years ago now (early 2000s), but still. This sort of thing is daft.

I have no problem with a school having a dress code the same way business do. And wearing something too revealing and being told so and given a punishment if the behavior persists is one thing. I'd sat it should be a very clear and common sense policy, you have to make sure everyone is aware and if a student is in violation, a warning given. It's possible to wear something you think is within dress code, but isn't.

But a shame suit? That's horrible. And there wasn't anything wrong with her outfit. It's not like it's a mini skirt. These people really need to get a grip.

My freshman year history teacher kept a box of sweatpants and sweatshirts to make the kids wear if they violated the dress code - in some cases, "wearing a sleeveless shirt with thin shoulder straps" qualified as a violation. No other teachers ever enforced the rule.

The rules should be consistent, reasonable, in writing and not over draconian. After all, nobody wants to see a fat kid like I was come to school in a speedo.

My teen has been told a few times by hall monitors or random teachers that her shorts were too short. They were actually within the "fingerlength" guideline, but she has long legs. Each time she's managed to get away with it stomping off while saying "Stop policing my body!" This is what they get for trying to slut shame the founder of the feminist club.

In her case it's also a rare upside of school overcrowding, I suppose. Those teachers can't keep up with her in the throngs, and there are so many kids the teachers don't remember their names.

The "shame suit" story is disgusting. I don't have a problem with schools having some kind of dress code, but have noticed that 99% of the rules apply to girls clothing types (bra straps, leggings, skirt and short lengths, mid-drift tops) while the male "violations" are restricted to saggy pants and maybe tanks with big armholes. It was really obvious from my son's middle school handbook that girls bodies are something to be horribly ashamed of, and anything form fitting or otherwise indicative of the girls having bodies at all was strictly verboten.

Girls. They are either considered nothing but a body or are shamed for having a body. And don't even get me started on the whole "It's distracting for boys, who are the real students!"

Here I was expecting a mini skirt or something SHORT! WTF? What kind of Victorian school is she going to? Do they put pants on table legs, too?

Vince524 said:

And there wasn't anything wrong with her outfit.

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Agreed. It was fine.

I saw this a few days ago, and my first thought was that this is the kind of thing that will blow up spectacularly in someone's face. I'm truly surprised that the school hasn't seen a flood of homemade "shame suits" filling the halls, given the attention the story has gotten. The best way to fight something like this is to make it ineffective.

Also, the second an administrator told the girl that the clothes were meant to "embarrass" or "humiliate" her, the school violated their own zero tolerance policy. That's bullying.

The CNN video story I saw on this has the school denying that it shames her.

Hogwash. None of the other punishments the school cited openly label her for her violation.

My HS used to send students home to change if they violated dress code.

So, a few girls started taking advantage of it to get a break in the middle of the day.

That's when the school went to sending kids to the gym teacher for gaudy mismatched outfits. The dress code violations stopped almost immediately.

Vince524 said:

I have no problem with a school having a dress code the same way business do. And wearing something too revealing and being told so and given a punishment if the behavior persists is one thing. I'd sat it should be a very clear and common sense policy, you have to make sure everyone is aware and if a student is in violation, a warning given. It's possible to wear something you think is within dress code, but isn't.

But a shame suit? That's horrible. And there wasn't anything wrong with her outfit. It's not like it's a mini skirt. These people really need to get a grip.

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I agree with all of this. I think dress codes are fine, mainly because businesses have them, and I think it's a good way for students to learn appropriate dress for when they get a job.

But the "shame suit" is just mean. And her skirt? I don't know what the rules are, exactly, or how long her skirt is supposed to be. But sometimes people wear skirts that are too short without even noticing it. It was probably just a mistake. Why should she be shamed for that?

Myrealana said:

That's when the school went to sending kids to the gym teacher for gaudy mismatched outfits. The dress code violations stopped almost immediately.

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Proving that shaming girls works!

Doesn't make it right, though.

Devil Ledbetter said:

Proving that shaming girls works!

Doesn't make it right, though.

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If they were using dress code violations to get out of school, that doesn't seem like "shaming" to me.

Amadan said:

If they were using dress code violations to get out of school, that doesn't seem like "shaming" to me.

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Making them wear ugly, embarrassing, mismatched gym clothes is shaming, regardless of their presumed reasons for violating the dress code.

Devil Ledbetter said:

Making them wear ugly, embarrassing, mismatched gym clothes is shaming, regardless of their presumed reasons for violating the dress code.

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I'm with you with the OP. I think the dress code needs to be reasonable, clear and written. There should be a warning system. First offense a written warning, 2nd offense letter home. You also need to have descretion to tell if a student is intentionally violating it as opposed to a real, "I had no idea this was wrong." But if the same students are violating it over and over again, making them change in school is better than sending them home so they can legally cut.

Also, with guys, I suppose you might have a few showing up in muscle t shirts, but do they wear very revealing clothing beyond that? Revealing of their underwear, sure. Although I did know a dude you used to walk around high school wear sweatpants, no underwear. His sweats had a fly and he'd often flash his pecker to people, make of female. But that wasn't a dress code issue as much as it was a pervert issue.

Devil Ledbetter said:

Making them wear ugly, embarrassing, mismatched gym clothes is shaming, regardless of their presumed reasons for violating the dress code.

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For some reason, I misread Myrealana's post and thought she meant that students wearing gaudy, mismatched outfits (so they'd get sent home) were being sent to the gym teacher (presumably to run laps or something).

I agree, putting students in clown suits (and shaming tactics in general) is not productive.

I cannot think of a single reason why any student anywhere for any reason should ever be humiliated like that. In my school, if a student violates the dress code, they are quietly taken aside, asked to go to the office, where parents are called to bring in appropriate clothing. It is done as quietly as possible.

Vince524 said:

I'm with you with the OP. I think the dress code needs to be reasonable, clear and written. There should be a warning system. First offense a written warning, 2nd offense letter home. You also need to have descretion to tell if a student is intentionally violating it as opposed to a real, "I had no idea this was wrong." But if the same students are violating it over and over again, making them change in school is better than sending them home so they can legally cut.

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One of the biggest problems with school dress codes is that violations are not given fairly. A leggy girl whose skirt is within the "proper" length gets accused of violating, while a girl with short legs may easily get away with wearing a shorter skirt. At my daughter's school, "jock" girls too-short running shorts worn as daywear are routinely overlooked while girls in standard shorts of the same length or longer get harassed about violating the dress code. Chesty girls are sent home for wearing the exact same top in a proper size as a smaller chested girl--whose violation is ignored.

What it really boils down to is which girls (or girls' body parts) are sexualized.

Vince524 said:

Also, with guys, I suppose you might have a few showing up in muscle t shirts, but do they wear very revealing clothing beyond that? Revealing of their underwear, sure. Although I did know a dude you used to walk around high school wear sweatpants, no underwear. His sweats had a fly and he'd often flash his pecker to people, make of female. But that wasn't a dress code issue as much as it was a pervert issue.

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Gross. He should have been arrested.

Devil Ledbetter said:

One of the biggest problems with school dress codes is that violations are not given fairly. A leggy girl whose skirt is within the "proper" length gets accused of violating, while a girl with short legs may easily get away with wearing a shorter skirt. At my daughter's school, "jock" girls too-short running shorts worn as daywear are routinely overlooked while girls in standard shorts of the same length or longer get harassed about violating the dress code. Chesty girls are sent home for wearing the exact same top in a proper size as a smaller chested girl--whose violation is ignored.

What it really boils down to is which girls (or girls' body parts) are sexualized.

Gross. He should have been arrested.

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I agree. But I have to say if I had a group of girls that were doing it constantly for the purpose of being sent home, I wouldn't get so upset with that punishment. The fact it stopped right after indicates to me they knew what they were doing, had the proper clothes to wear. But it wouln'd be my go to place. Besides, what if your ugly outfit doesn't fit?

Larry M said:

I cannot think of a single reason why any student anywhere for any reason should ever be humiliated like that. In my school, if a student violates the dress code, they are quietly taken aside, asked to go to the office, where parents are called to bring in appropriate clothing. It is done as quietly as possible.

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And that's the way it should be handled. And if it's a very minor, possibly accidental violation, it should just be a warning.

The girl's skirt wasn't scandalous in the slightest. I've seen shorter (and certainly tighter) skirts on plenty of professional women.

And humiliating a girl who is brand new to the school -- do these administrators have ANY memory of what it's like to be a teenager? I moved to a new school when I was 14, and I would have died of embarrassment if this had happened to me. Even if her skirt had been genuinely mini, I think you give a new kid the benefit of the doubt.

I wonder what this school's cheerleading outfits look like? The ones at my school were certainly shorter than that, and the cheerleaders wore them to school regularly.

Devil Ledbetter said:

Gross. He should have been arrested.

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IIRC, he was, but on unrelated charges. He was kicked out and attended some real loser school of rejects.

I do know that he flashed this one girl in the middle of the hall. She was a mousy little girl who kept to heself mostly. She was with her friends and he wanted to embarrass her. Instead, she lit up and turned to her friends who were right there and said, "Oh my God, that reminds me. I got into college. I'm going to study micro biology as a major."

As a teacher, I'm appalled at the way this school handled it. That's horrifying. At my school, they wait in the office for a parent to bring them something to change into.

On the other hand, here's another side of the dress code thing. When I started, we were advised, as male teachers, that if we noticed a girl in violation of the dress code, it was best not to handle it ourselves, but rather to tell a female staff member. Because of the potential awkward questions that might arise from a male staff member noticing that sort of thing. I pretty much took the advice as permission to ignore dress code violations completely.

Vince524 said:

Also, with guys, I suppose you might have a few showing up in muscle t shirts, but do they wear very revealing clothing beyond that?

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But that's the thing about dress codes...why does it only have to be about what is "revealing"? That's not the focus of dress codes in the workplace. So why should it be in a school?