Undressing the Code

  Bra straps, bodies, and shame. Nationwide, young women are using publicly expressing their dissatisfaction with school dress codes.

  However, Libertyville High School has a dress code policy that is more up for interpretation, with the LHS student handbook stating: “Students are expected to present an appearance that does not disrupt the educational process or interfere with the maintenance of a positive teaching/learning climate. Dress and/or grooming which is not in accord with reasonable standards of health, safety, modesty, and decency will be considered inappropriate.’’

   A positive of the interpretation-based dress code policy of LHS is that it allows teachers and other LHS staff members to focus on what the clothing they believe to be disruptive. Some of the teachers at LHS who appreciate the receptiveness of the dress code policy are Mr. Brian Voss, who teaches sociology and AP Macroeconomics and Ms. Andrea Lara, who is the advisor for student council and teaches AP and honors US history. Voss said that his alignment with interpretive dress code policies is that, “[There are] things you can’t predict ahead of time…[Sometimes] there is something that you can’t even think of that is going to cause a disturbance. You need to have [the dress code] open [for interpretation] to plan for that.”

  Ms. Lara believes that having a dress code policy in place with specific rules can cause problems, asserting that, “If we get into specific rules, then it gets weird…it gets to like where people are pulling out rulers [to measure skirt/dress length] and so forth.”

  Ms. Lara explained her appreciation of LHS’s existent dress code policy: “One of the things that I’m proud of with our dress code is we’re saying, ‘we want to teach you first.” Ms. Lara is also the sponsor of AdvoCats, a club at LHS that advocates for feminism and observed that “there’s this weird pressure that a woman’s body is always seen as sexual.”

  During the 2000-2001 school year, LHS’s dress code stated that “students are expected to wear clothing that covers them from shoulder to mid-thigh and backs must be covered”, and listed unallowed garments as, “see-through clothing, halters, tube-tops, short shorts, short skirts, no underwear/undergarments should show, half shirts, midriffs, fishnet shirts, hats, caps, sweatbands, bandanas, headwear, hoods; any item of apparel that is offensive or inappropriate or sexually suggestive, pant waistline must be within a few inches of the body’s natural waistline; any item of apparel or jewelry associated with gangs, drugs, cults or undesirable groups, chains (long and thick linked).”

  These rules changed again in 2008-2009 and soon became the current policy in place today. According to Mrs. Diana Gratz, a secretary in the assistant principal’s office, the original change in 1999-2000 could have been due to, “who was writing the book at the time,” who may have been trying to make it easier to determine what wasn’t allowed. But, in 2008-2009, they began to move away from the specificity because some of the administration “may have only been looking for those specific items,” and not what was distracting.

  Some teachers prefer LHS’s dress code policies prior to the 2008-2009 school year. Mr. Richard Brenner, who teaches AP calculus, geometry honors, and intermediate algebra II and began teaching at LHS in 1990 favors previous dress codes, in which rules are clear and concise. Brenner reflected on how the rules changed in LHS’s dress codes over the year and the broadness of present dress code rules, elaborating, “By making [the dress code] more vague I can see that, yes, girls might be more targeted because the standard of decency for what a girl wears on her top and what a guy wears on his top are different.”

  Brenner explained his preference of dress codes with explicitly stated rules, explaining on his belief that when

“[Dress codes] [were] more straightforward, [they] did not differentiate between the sexes. Say [there was a rule where people] had to have [their] shoulders covered, that would then be true for guys and girls.”

 It’s fairly rare to hear of someone at LHS getting dress coded, but it’s not completely unheard of. Jess Web, a senior at LHS was recently dress coded for wearing a shirt that read, “two words, one finger”, implying a vulgar gesture. Web personally feels that her shirt, “wasn’t really interrupting anything” and “wasn’t distracting from the lesson plans.” Although Web describes having to change into her gym shirt as “irritating”, she clarified that it was, “pretty easy” to change and the procedure was kept “low key.” Web believes that although dress codes can be a “ little sexist” that LHS’s “administration tries to be as unbiased they can.”

  For some students who attended other schools before LHS, the school’s dress code is often seen as a privilege. LHS senior Annie Lancaster did not experience an environment where she was allowed to express herself through her clothing when she attended Warren Township High School.

  Lancaster said that Warren’s dress code was “extremely gender biased”, adding that, “Girls weren’t allowed to wear leggings, anything open-backed, anything that was like a tank top…[as well as] skirts or shorts or dresses that were above the knee.” Lancaster recalled that she’s “had several times where [she] was taken out of class” due to dress code violations and that this administrative action was “more detrimental to [her] education than anything else.”

  Lancaster now is allowed to wear clothing that she feels comfortable in, since she moved after her freshman year from WTHS to Libertyville High School. Lancaster said that when she was made aware of Libertyville dress code that she was,“so excited” because she, “realized [that she] could wear leggings and be comfortable during school”, and she discerns her opinion that, “LHS is more focused on making sure that everyone feels accepted”, in their clothing expression, whereas “[Warren] was more focused on the sexualization aspect of fashion.”

  Likewise, LHS junior Michael Graham spent the majority of his elementary and middle school years under a dress code that he described as “very strict with their uniform,” when he attended St. Joe’s Catholic School, which has a required school uniform policy in place. Graham recalled that, “a lot of girls got detention for having their skirt [deemed too short for the school’s standards].” Although Graham stated that he doesn’t “think the dress code itself has sexism,” but he pointed out that,“…teachers can kinda take [a dress code] and make it sexist for guys and girls and they focus more on girls cause they’re easy targets.”

  Since our modern dress code is pretty vague, it’s hard to understand what is out of bounds. However, the dress code from 2000-2001 gave specific examples of prohibited clothing. So, we, the authors of the piece, decided to see what would break our dress code by dressing against the code from 2000-2001 for two days.

Jenna

 Breaking LHS’s dress code from 15 years ago was not difficult to achieve. On the the first day, I wore a crop top and a skirt and although it felt odd to wear a this in the late fall, no one seemed fazed or offended by my outfit. Aside from compliments, no comments about my outfit were made by my peers or teachers that I’m aware of. On the second day, I decided to wear a shirt that referenced my sexuality, since it may be seen as “distracting.” I felt some light stares at my shirt from people throughout the day, but no one said anything.

Matthew

  Our friend, and fellow Drops of Ink staff writer, Matthew Price, decided to help the experiment by giving us a glimpse of what it was like for a boy to break the dress code. It was more difficult for Matthew to dress to break the code each day. Aside from low riding and wearing a hat, there weren’t many rules he could break. On the first day, when Matthew was low riding, almost no one noticed and those who did, didn’t seem to care. However, when Matthew wore a hat at school, it caused disruptions throughout the day, whereas showing our bra straps and midriffs did not.

Georgia

  I would like to say that I am not a Trump supporter. But when I read part of the dress code that read “Students are expected to present an appearance that does not disrupt the educational process,” which was the same in the 2000-2001 and current dress codes, I knew that this shirt would be sure to derail class in some ways. Some people who knew me thought it was a joke, but others stared at me or got a little overwhelmed.

   I learned that since politics has become so personal, wearing a shirt with Trump’s name on it was more distracting than a bra strap could be.