Stuyvesant High School is considered one of New York City's top public high schools, but some of the students there think a recently imposed dress code is just dumb.
The New York Post reports that about 100 students decided to protest the code, which bans girls from exposing their shoulders, midriffs, lower backs, bras and underwear, by having a "Slutty Wednesday," during which they intentionally broke the conservative dress standards.
"We work our asses off here, and school is about learning. Clothing is not important," ninth-grader Lucy Greider told the Post. Greider says she's been brought into the office 10 times this year for violating the dress code, which was introduced last fall. "A lot of the classrooms don't have a/c's and when it is 80 degrees outside and it is really hot, it's perfectly OK to show a little skin."
A 2010 poll by the National Center for Education Statistics found that about 57 percent of public schools enforce some kind of dress code. In addition, 19 percent of public schools require school uniforms, a 12 percent increase over the previous decade.
Dress codes, including school uniforms, often drift in and out of the public debate. However, more restrictive dress codes are usually reserved for private school systems. In 1996, President Bill Clinton stirred up controversy when he had the Department of Education distribute manuals to all of the nation's 16,000 school districts on how they could legally enforce school uniform policies without violating the First Amendment.
source, with video.
edit: all right, mea culpa for not posting this article, which explains the really shitty sexism and sizeism that this policy enforces....which is why the students adopted the term "slutty wednesday" in the first place. i hope this will clarify things/chasten some of you.
The New York Post reports that about 100 students decided to protest the code, which bans girls from exposing their shoulders, midriffs, lower backs, bras and underwear, by having a "Slutty Wednesday," during which they intentionally broke the conservative dress standards.
"We work our asses off here, and school is about learning. Clothing is not important," ninth-grader Lucy Greider told the Post. Greider says she's been brought into the office 10 times this year for violating the dress code, which was introduced last fall. "A lot of the classrooms don't have a/c's and when it is 80 degrees outside and it is really hot, it's perfectly OK to show a little skin."
A 2010 poll by the National Center for Education Statistics found that about 57 percent of public schools enforce some kind of dress code. In addition, 19 percent of public schools require school uniforms, a 12 percent increase over the previous decade.
Dress codes, including school uniforms, often drift in and out of the public debate. However, more restrictive dress codes are usually reserved for private school systems. In 1996, President Bill Clinton stirred up controversy when he had the Department of Education distribute manuals to all of the nation's 16,000 school districts on how they could legally enforce school uniform policies without violating the First Amendment.
source, with video.
edit: all right, mea culpa for not posting this article, which explains the really shitty sexism and sizeism that this policy enforces....which is why the students adopted the term "slutty wednesday" in the first place. i hope this will clarify things/chasten some of you.
Hm, come to think of it...most of the rules we had for the boys had a tendency to single out fashion that would be more common among black students.
I wonder if they have a copy of their dress code online that we could peruse. Hm.
Also, hell, they're letting the kids out for lunch now? Craziness. Though maybe Stuy always allowed it. I went to another NYC school and we weren't officially allowed to leave the school for lunch.
Was there a reason you weren't allowed to leave for lunch? My first high school didn't allow for it, but my second high school allowed for juniors and seniors to leave with a school issued lunch pass card that the parents signed off on at the beginning of the year.
Just doesn't seem like that much fun.
And smh at the whole "boys will be distracted boys!" argument.
but this rule was almost never enforced and I broke it all the time. Girls who broke dress code, on the other hand, always got sent home to change.
I dress up in alternative style a lot. And one day I wore all black, I had an off the shoulder baggy black sweater, a black pleather mini skirt I have worn to school previously, and thigh high lace stockings.
In the library, the older security guard comes in and takes me out and escorts me to the assistant principals office. The dude then says that my skirt is too short and "with all these boys around you'd never know". He then insisted that the dress code demands all skirts and shorts to be knee length- despite the dress code actually saying that skirts and shorts have to reach my mid thigh. Which it did,
He then made me use MY CELL PHONE to call my mom so he can talk to her about my indecent attire. My mom had just woken up from a nap and said "you know, she just turned 17, and she can drop out at any time she wants if this is such a big issue"
Another time I got Introuble for wearing shorts with black solid thigh highs. I wore the shorts this week without the thigh highs and didn't get Introuble. Ugh.
The one benefit was it was a casual enough school, so the dress code was rarely enforced.
Boys dress code was to show up wearing clothes.
I seriously don't even get it.