ONTD Political

‘Slutty Wednesday’: NY high-school students protest dress code

2:14 pm - 06/07/2012
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.
victoriabloom 18th-Jun-2012 02:19 am (UTC)
I'm in the suburbs, but even the people I know who student taught this year in sparsely populated areas (where there wouldn't be anything within driving distance) were all at schools that allowed students out at lunch. Depending on the school and area, some students do drive places, others walk to a fast food place, and some just hang out in parks, take walks, go to each others' houses, etc. I don't know, maybe it's a Canadian thing? I've never heard of a school here (at least in Ontario) monitoring students at lunch; they don't even have to check out to leave the building or anything, they just leave from whatever door is closest.
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