As Red Knights enter the 2024-2025 school year, they’re greeted with a familiar experience: a change to the school dress code. The newest version of the dress code now instructs that “…[S]hirts must fully cover the waistband of the pants, shorts, or skirt.” Additionally, it now excludes shorts from acceptable Mass clothing. These new restrictions are largely arbitrary, and despite their stated focus on “emphasizing a positive learning environment,” they only continue to reinforce the negative aspects of the dress code.
The first time I wrote about the dress code was in 2022, and since then, I’ve identified three key factors that make the dress code disliked and harmful:
- The arbitrary nature of the rules and the constant changes to them.
- Unequal rules and enforcement often disproportionately impact girls and female-presenting students.
- The stated motivations behind the dress code raise a broader question about who these rules benefit.
The new restrictions play into these factors, undermining any power the dress code would have to be a legitimately respected rule. While it’s reasonable for administrators to have a dress code, and it’s impossible to please everyone, removing some of these factors could make the dress code more fair. This goal is achievable, and up until now, our dress codes in the past few years have brought us closer to that goal.
However, as it stands, the new restrictions are completely arbitrary. For starters, the new shorts rule for Mass is unnecessary. We’ve functioned just fine as a student body while wearing shorts to Mass. While I understand that the Mass dress code is intended to ensure students respect the Mass and are more dressed up, a nice pair of shorts does not undermine anyone’s piety. They also aren’t inherently less dressy than pants. We already have restrictions on the length of shorts, which carries over to any shorts worn to Mass. How does removing a reasonable clothing option benefit us or increase reverence?
By disallowing shorts, the dress code sends the impression that church-appropriate shorts are not dressy enough for our school’s religious services. However, they make no mention of disallowing skirts or dresses of a similar length. The distinction is meaningless, and banning shorts for Mass doesn’t fix any significant problem. Instead of banning shorts altogether, administrators could have simply allowed only certain materials and lengths of shorts. When rules are seemingly meaningless, it becomes nearly impossible for students to ever see the dress code as a fair or legitimate restriction.
The restriction on shorts for Mass also unintentionally affects predominantly boys, which further emphasizes the aforementioned second factor of inequality. Girls aren’t as affected, because many girls already don’t wear shorts to school due to restrictions. This is likely one of the first times that many male students have experienced an arbitrary dress code rule that predominantly affects them– yet female students have been experiencing this for years. In a Knight Errant survey, female respondents made up 66.7% of those who had reported being dress-coded before. Additionally, 69% of all female respondents reported either having been dress-coded or almost dress-coded, compared to 36% of all male respondents.
The waistband rule is another arbitrary and strict rule that predominantly affects female students. In a Knight Errant survey, female respondents made up 96% of those who reported being affected by this new rule. Not only does the new waistband rule mean that students could be dress-coded even if their shirt fully covers their skin, imposing unnecessarily strict rules, but it also makes it nearly impossible for especially female students to wear the clothes they already have. With cropped shirts in style, it’s difficult to find a shirt that touches the top of one’s pants, let alone covers the waistband. The waistband of someone’s pants being visible is not an offense that warrants potentially being asked to change at the expense of class time. These new rules will continue to result in learning time being disrupted unnecessarily.
Finally, the dress code is unpopular and ineffective because it doesn’t actually align with its stated motivation. The dress code itself says that it is “to promote a positive learning environment” and that “[E]xpectations are for appropriate self-expression, not punishment or a source of shame to the student.” For whom does the dress code promote a positive learning environment? Certainly not the students who may lose class time over a shirt that doesn’t fully cover their entire waistband, nor the students who may have to change into the gym uniform if they are found in violation of the dress code. Those are inherently punishments– and embarrassing ones at that. It’s unrealistic to say that the dress code isn’t a source of shame. Dress coding a student singles them out for their clothes, potentially causing them to feel embarrassed or self-conscious. Requiring students to change clothes, often into visibly school-provided clothes, adds another level of humiliation.
It’s fair and reasonable to have a dress code. However, a dress code that imposes constantly changing, arbitrary rules that are disproportionately enforced and don’t live up to their motivation will never be an effective community standard and ignores the needs of the school community. It doesn’t have to be this way. The dress code should return to reasonable restrictions that have a purpose, and administrators should make every effort to apply it fairly. Students’ clothes should not matter more than their learning.