ADDRESSING STUDENT DRESS CODES
New guideline recommendations expected in May

by James Keller

Dressed in her white and green T-shirt, black pants and a red jacket that reaches below her waist, Amanda Choury probably wouldn't offend school board members calling for students to cover up.

And while the 15-year-old Grade 10 student at St. Patrick's High School understands recent demands for a student dress code, she worries that such policies will go too far.

“Sometimes it can be really disrespectful to come in really short skirts and low-cut tops,” she says. But dress codes can get out of hand, “because they don't let you wear hats or jackets.”

In January, Peggy Draper, a Halifax Regional School Board member for Waverley-Fall River , proposed that the board consider drafting a dress code for students and staff. Board members voted to ask superintendent Carole Olsen and her staff to research what policies are in place at Halifax schools and in other boards, and report back with recommendations in May.

Draper says she made the request after some male student teachers in her area were concerned with the clothes females in their classrooms were wearing.

“A couple of people approached me and said they found themselves in somewhat awkward situations,” says Draper.

One of the teachers who approached her said he was worried about even making eye contact with a female student wearing revealing clothes. He was worried, says Draper, that he could be accused of leering at her.

“If you are a teacher and you say something to one of the students, you run the risk of them implying you are looking somewhere you shouldn't be looking, and that can cause an employee or a student teacher to get nervous,” says Draper.

While the board does not have a dress code in place, some schools already set their own. At St. Patrick's High School, a handbook given to students addresses acceptable clothing in two sentences: “Students are asked to wear appropriate clothing for a school environment. Decisions in this respect are at the discretion of the school staff.”

Policy too vague

Maggie Lovett, a 16-year-old Grade 11 student, knows about the St. Patrick's dress code, and she says it is too vague.

“It's not specific and people don't generally adhere to it,” she says. “Some people can be sent home for (breaking the rules), but it doesn't happen often; it's never happened in any of my classes.”

Any policy the board adopts should be clear, simple and specific, says Draper.

“I'm a believer that if we set a standard that is achievable and respectable, then in a very short time frame the problem would not exist.”

Draper already has a dress code in mind — one she says would be specific enough to enforce.

“I would like to see that we have a couple of very simple rules, one being no underwear showing, and the other would be no flesh showing from a certain distance above the neck-line to a certain distance above the knees.” That would cover low-cut tops, bare midriffs and short skirts for girls, and exposed underwear for boys.

“I think that's kind of extreme,” says Maggie. “I think everyone just has to be modest at school, but you don't have to wear skirts to your ankles. That's ridiculous.”

Keri Soward, a 17-year-old Grade 11 student at St. Patrick's, thinks Draper's ideas for a dress code are outdated.

“I don't like that. It's for older people,” says Keri, who sometimes shows her bare midriff in warmer weather. “A lot of the clothes I wear would go against it.”

Address larger issues

But such a strict dress code would address larger issues, says Draper.

“Whether it's showing a lot of cleavage or their midriff with rings or males showing too much underwear, we need to help them because they may be sending out a message and creating an image they don't mean to be creating,” she says.

Only one of the province's seven English-speaking school boards has a detailed dress code. The rest leave the decision up to individual schools. The Tri-County Regional School Board, which governs schools in Shelburne, Yarmouth and Digby counties, specifically singles out spaghetti-strap tops, bare midriffs, halter tops, plunging necklines, shorts and skirts shorter than mid-thigh, see-through clothing and visible underwear.

Revealing clothing disrupts the classroom, claims board spokesperson Heather Burlingham.

“If you have a young female student with a plunging neckline and her breasts are exposed, that is interfering with the educational process,” she says.

“It's pointed mostly at female students — they're pretty much cropped from under the breasts and somewhere above their pubic line, so it became a grave matter of concern.”

The board informs parents about the dress code, now in its second year, every August. Burlingham thinks other school boards should follow Tri-County's lead.

“If students are going to come to school dressed inappropriately, I think the boards should do something,” she says.

Sara Hopper, an 18-year-old Grade 12 student at Queen Elizabeth High School in Halifax , thinks a new dress code would be a great idea. Her school already has a dress code banning “articles of clothing that unnecessarily draw attention,” but it doesn't change what students are wearing.