I was a member of a committee to revise and revamp a school district’s student/parent handbook a number of times. It was during the time I was advocating for teacher professional development sessions dealing with sensitivity training about those who were not straight just as we did with other groups into which students fell and getting the words “sexual orientation” and, with time, “gender identity” added to all those policies, especially the ones on bullying, harassment, and nondiscrimination, that specifically listed any group such as race, color, creed, religion etc.

What better way to ensure this would be done than to be in a position on a committee with official standing and who, if educated, would do the right thing, as happened when one committee’s support to include those words resulted in inclusion.

But beyond my personal concern, we covered all aspects of what the handbook contained and that included the dress code a topic that generated a lot of discussion as it was becoming obvious even back then, many years ago  now, that most provisions in these codes are vague, too broad, and are often based on the personal tastes, whether personal, political, or religious, of those in charge of the policies that controlled and molded young minds

Girls could not wear dresses with spaghetti straps because it exposed too much skin and would distract boys during and between class, while it was totally acceptable that the boys could wear nothing below their waist beyond baggy basketball shorts that, as they swaggered down the halls they could advertising their goods there and when they man-spread in their classroom seats with the occasional shift to catch the eye.

If students wanted to wear any sports fan gear like football, hockey, or generic sports t-shirts with logos, students could only wear those teams, professional or college, that were in state. Any team or college was banned if it was from another state. This was because of a morbid fear that team logos represented certain gangs and sports team logos could be a form of gang endorsement or affiliation. If your parents went to an in-state college, you could wear their college team shirt. If your parents moved into the state after having attended college out of state, you could not wear theirs.

Gang, gang-related, or pro-gang clothing was banned with no one really able to define what that meant, leaving the application of that provision up to personal judgment.

Heavy Metal was considered satanic and so T-shirts related were verboten. These also fell into the more generic category of anything promoting or normalizing violence. Although seemingly neutral, the problem this posed was that while a kid could not wear an Al Pacino in Scar Face T-shirt, the one that had a black and white line drawing of a seemingly severed human hand nailed to a piece of wood with copious amounts of red blood, the only color on the torso sized picture, was acceptable because the wording was “He did it for you.”

When it came to hairstyles, the main directive was that they should not be a danger to self or others or distract from learning without any clear criteria as to what comprised a distraction and if there were degrees of it.

This generally became the older generation clicking its collective tongues over what those whipper-snappers look like, while recounting the days when men looked like men.

In my youth there had been a chart of haircuts to pick from in the barber shop. Including the Crew Cut, whose close cousin was the Baseball because of a frontal upswing supported by a pomade, all the styles were based on the Military Cut, and everyone I knew, except for Walter who got what seemed to be the only haircut Black kids got, had some version of the same haircut. Aside from our world being in color, we all looked like we were living in the forties.

Times have changed and so have demographics. Not every person in this country can carry off a Military Hair Cut, and since that tonsorial style is a man-made expectation, not everyone will ignore their own cultures and reality to awkwardly comply to what is actually a matter of someone else’s preferences.

In many of the suggestions to add or delete something in the dress code, there were serious discussions as we saw those things assumed to be neutral were in reality biased.

While boys fit into the generic and clipped bans on gang clothing, out of state team wear, and not being indecent without any definition, those parts of the dress code concerning the girls was very detailed.

The temptresses needed to be controlled.  

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I worked at a private Catholic college prep high school that had a very strict dress code that included jackets and ties. Uniforms would be introduced years after I had moved on. With parents supporting public schools through taxes and opting to spend additional money on their own kids’ education, they wanted the most bang for the buck and part of that was a strong education, instilling self-discipline, and molding men who could take their place in a professional world which called for strict codes of conduct and dress.

The reasons for any provision in any code was clearly spelled out as were all details for the sake of clarity and so the dress code was easily defended if challenged, and clear so as to be easily understood by students, parents, and staff.

On the school district’s committees that I had been on, much of the discussion was philosophical, religiously based, and too often lacking in any real reason to add or delete. There was also a fear of someone somewhere at some time possibly filing a complaint.

And too much time was wasted on what was nothing other than matters of personal taste.

Too often many provisions in dress codes are based on one group not knowing much about another, cultural differences newly introduced to a community, and, too often, people in positions of authority choosing not to learn about new things but attempting to force all into the old.

The examples of race and gender bias that can be seen in dress code provisions are plentiful no example is clearer than the treatment of hair.

Native American children sent to “Indian School” had their hair shorn so they would be less Indian and more White. Black kids who at one time decided to let their hair grow out and end the mandatory close cropped almost shaved cut white kids like me assumed was how they had to have it for some reason, found that just with White people, with their hair grown out, they had more hairstyle options, something that horrified the establishment back then and still continues to do now.

Troy, Texas, has a huge problem in its schools, something that threatens the proper education of students, and has dealt with it.

It seems a sixth-grade student whose mother is White and his father Black with his hair influenced by both, like any middle school age kid attempting to establish identity, grew his hair out to see what he could do with it. As it grew the student’s mother was informed that in accordance with the dress code she must cut her son’s hair with no specifics as to how or what length or styles would be acceptable in accordance with the hair on his head.

The mother cut the hair short on the sides of his head, a common style choice, and braided the remaining hair on the top of his head to keep it close to his scalp gathering the hair on the back of his head in a braided knot leaving the possibility open for further experimentation at home.

The two-year old school dress code policy forbids boys from wearing their hair in “a ponytail, top knot, bun or similar styles.”

None of these is a danger to student safety and welfare nor is any a distraction from education. It is a matter of taste.

A person would have to be comatose not to see this as a prohibition of boys doing girl stuff like with their hair, and clearly this list is based on the premise that everyone has so many more options than just these, while the reality is that for some these are the only options.

Because the new haircut fell into the nebulous “similar styles” category, the student received a multi-day in-school suspension (detention during the whole school day separated from everyone on campus from all but those similarly detained).

As an attempt to reduce the subjective judgment about students’ hair and to eliminate conscious of ingrained racial bias, the Crown act has been proposed in the state legislature that would ban hair discrimination on the state level.

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