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Are School
Dress Codes A Violation Of Civil Liberties? |
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09.20.2004
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Lacuna Coil (file)
Photo: Century
Media |
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| Every school day, millions of students in the United
States are told what they can and cannot wear. In 22 states, school
districts can require students to wear uniforms like navy-blue or
black shorts, pants and skirts, and white T-shirts or blouses. From
small cities like Moss Point, Mississippi, to metropolises like
Philadelphia, students are being searched, suspended or otherwise
reprimanded by school administrators for their wardrobes.
In
Muskogee, Oklahoma, a Muslim sixth grader named Nashala Hearn was
suspended twice for wearing her head scarf because it violated the
dress code of the Benjamin Franklin Science Academy, the school she
attended. On August 27, more than 200 male students at Bonham High
School in Bonham, Texas, were herded through the cafeteria,
videotaped and forced to lift up their shirts so that school
officials could determine if their waistlines were too low, or if
their underwear was showing. And since the school year began last
month at the Duncanville High School and Ninth Grade Center in
Duncanville, Texas, more than 700 students have been suspended for
violating the school's "zero-tolerance" dress code. One of them was
a 13-year-old honor student who was suspended for having her shirt
untucked.
No doubt, these are extreme examples of dress-code
enforcement, and are far more severe than the recent incident that
occurred at Wilbur Middle School, in Wichita, Kansas, in which
Principal Cherie Crain banned "Goth" clothing and accessories (see
"Wichita
Middle School Cracks Down on Goths"). Though the students
complied with Crain's ban and avoided suspension, it raised
questions about where these issues could lead. It seemed that if a
student could get the boot just for coupling a black T-shirt with
some nail polish, then many other things could also be seen as
grounds for suspension. Does a dress code help to eliminate gang
activity and make schools safer, or is this just an example of
schools trying to eliminate individuality? And if you want to dress
like Marilyn Manson or Nelly, should your school have the power to
make you look like John Mayer?
Tiffany Basgall is 23 years
old and lives in Wichita. She used to be a Goth in high school, and
"got picked on a lot," so what happened at Wilbur struck a nerve
with her. She also has a 13-year-old sister who likes to wear black
clothing. So Basgall wrote an editorial that appeared in the
Wichita Eagle, accusing Crain of "openly supporting
discrimination."
"I think it's BS," she said. "[Crain] said
she wanted to change the dress code to make kids more comfortable,
but changing anybody's clothes isn't going to make them behave any
differently. All this does is make Goth kids feel like bigger
outsiders. Learning social skills is a large part of the school
experience. Dressing a certain way, and having people react to the
way you dress that's learning social skills."
The
dress-code flap in Wichita is similar to what has occurred at
schools in places like Whiting, Indiana, and Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Essentially, clothing (be it patent-leather pants or a baggy pair of
Ecko jeans) can be banned if a school's principal thinks that it
will help "curb gang activity." In its publication Manual of
School Uniforms, the U.S. Department of Education cited
"decreasing violence and theft" and "preventing students from
wearing gang-related colors to school" as benefits of adopting a
school-uniform policy. But according to another organization, the
Education Commission of the States which monitors and researches
education policy for 49 states and the District of Columbia none
of these benefits have ever actually been researched.
"There
are a few anecdotal stories where a district has had a
school-uniform or dress-code policy and there were fewer suspensions
or expulsions, but as far as actual research into the matter,
[there's been] nothing," said Jennifer Dounay, spokesperson for the
ECS. "There's no causal relationship. Some places have implemented a
policy and they've seen a decrease in student-behavior problems, and
in some places they've dropped the policy after a couple of
years."
"The area of school uniforms and dress codes, we
leave up to state and local school districts to make their decisions
how best to implement those policies," said Jim Bradshaw,
spokesperson for the Department of Education. "I'm not familiar with
that report, but overall, we don't provide any guidance. It's a
state and local issue."
So if none of these theories have
ever really been proven, and the federal government has stepped out
of the equation, where does the buck actually stop? According to
Dounay, the state governments give the power of decision to school
districts, and school districts pass responsibility on to
principals.
"Various court cases deal with students' First
Amendment rights as far as clothing, and the courts have generally
said that students do not have to get rid of those rights when they
walk through a school door," Dounay said. "But at the same time,
courts have said that the school does have an interest in safety,
and if putting a uniform policy in place keeps the student safe,
then that's an overriding interest."
This decentralization of
policy, and the vagueness of the relationship between a wardrobe and
student safety, has resulted in the wide range of dress codes in
American schools. Perhaps not surprisingly, the people most effected
students are often divided on the issue as well, as exemplified
by the opinions of two people who wrote to MTV News regarding the
Wichita story.
"Racial and religiously offensive clothing
should be banned. That is about as far as it should go," said Jason
Paar, a 17-year-old from Olean, New York. "If you discriminate
against a type of preference, you are discriminating against the
student. That should never happen."
"Bitch all you want,
demand that a public school not have dress-code policies, [or] that
this is a violation of our civil liberties," said Lara Niedzwiedzki,
a 21-year-old Chicagoan. "This principal is doing nothing wrong by
setting [a dress code] in place. Don't we have bigger problems to
worry about?"
James
Montgomery
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