Year in Review, Winter: Dress Code Discussed

To promote a more gender neutral campus, StuCo pursued a revision to the dress code. After a meeting in September discussing the flaws in the dress code, it became clear that students were concerned about the lack of gender neutrality in the current code. The current dress code holds male and female students to different standards, where “girls” can dress more freely with less formality, promoting gender stereotypes, such that boys are more professional than girls. The current dress code additionally causes stress for students who are not comfortable declaring their gender as either “boy,” or “girl,” especially in instances where faculty must decide the gender of a student while enforcing the rule of neckties. The policy committee formed two dress code options which allowed for gender neutrality between both binary genders, as well as non-binary genders. The first option, less formal than the second, passed in StuCo. In this code, all students must wear either a dress shirt, sweater, turtleneck, dress or ethnic attire. The tie would no longer be required, but ties, jackets and scarves would always be acceptable. After the new dress code passed, StuCo proposed the code to faculty as a consideration. Although faculty may not decide to change the dress code at all, StuCo hopes that they will keep the students’ proposal in mind as they alter the code for next year, in an effort to move towards a more equitable campus.