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.
That said, I don't think there's anything wrong with a reasonable dress code that applies equally to all. Personally, I don't really want to see *anyone's* underwear or butt crack in a school/work setting.
Then again, my school's dress code only applied to girls who weren't conventionally attractive, because the vice principal liked the "eye candy" of the conventionally pretty, skinny girls in their tank-tops and belly shirts. :| (and yeah, everyone knew that was why, and somehow he still kept his job, ugh.)