Female-Focused Dress Code Under Scrutiny

Hamden High sophomore Maddi came to school Friday wearing a sweater over her tank top. She didn’t mind, given the temperature outside. But come warmer weather, she’ll risk having a teacher order her to wear the sweater — in order to conform to the dress code.

That doesn’t happen very often, said Maddi, who preferred not to share her last name. Teachers tend not to be too strict about students wearing tank tops that violate the school’s dress code. She said she has had a teacher tell her, in a respectful way, just to keep her sweater on so that she didn’t violate it.

That may soon change. Members of the Hamden Board of Education (BOE) are looking to update Hamden’s dress code to make it more gender neutral.

On Tuesday night, the BOE heard a presentation from the district’s administration on the topic. 

Board member Melissa Kaplan said she brought up the idea of changing the dress code when she first arrived on the board in 2017. She said she has been aware of problems with the dress code since she was on the Ridge Hill PTA before joining the board.

The dress code, she said, is outdated, and pertains mostly to girls’ clothing.

The handbook states that students are not allowed to wear shorts that end above the middle of the thigh, Soffe shorts, midriff tops, low cut tops, pants that sit below the buttocks, and sunglasses, costumes, masks, or hoods.

Administrators and students said that students are also not supposed to wear tube tops or spaghetti straps, or have bra straps showing, though that regulation does not appear in the handbook.

Though the code does not explicitly single out girls, those rules affect female students more often than they do boys. As Maddi put it, ​“They just don’t make a lot of cute girls’ shorts in that length.”

“Currently the dress code is geared towards what girls normally wear,” said senior Rebecca Oberman-Levine (pictured). She and other students said, is that fact places the burden on girls of ensuring that other students are not distracted by clothing. That, said senior Mathew Mueller, is ​“totally not something that we should be reinforcing through our dress code.”

Kaplan said she is concerned that female students feel ashamed when teachers enforce rules like skirt and short length. If enforcement done in the wrong way, she said, ​“you’re essentially slut shaming them and humiliating them.” The district needs a dress code policy, she said, ​“that does not shame girls, and does not make girls responsible for boys’ distractions.” A girl’s focus in school ​“should be on her algebra exam, not on skirt length.”

Sophomore Morgan Tobio told the Independent that a teacher once ​“dress coded” her in middle school because her shorts didn’t go past her fingertips. Her father had to bring a pair of her brother’s shorts so she could finish out the day.

“Enforcing young girls’ clothing is weird and counterintuitive,” she said. ​“I think that instead of making girls dress so boys aren’t distracted, teach the boys not to be distracted.”

Focus On Professionalism, Not Distraction

No students who spoke with the Independent said they had ever felt ashamed or humiliated by the dress code since coming to the high school. Some seniors said that a few years ago, when they entered the high school, it was more common for teachers to ​“dress code” students, but they don’t see it as much anymore due to what they said are improvements in school culture.

They said the school, under the leadership of Principal Nadine Gannon, has been open to hearing student concerns about school issues, including the dress code.

Senior Mariam Khan said that she and other students have had numerous opportunities to work with the administration to change high school culture, policy, and practices. Khan, like other members of a group of students who met with the Independent, is a student ambassador. Student ambassadors work with the administration to ​“build a positive and welcoming school environment,” according to the student handbook. She said that since students began to bring up the dress code with administrators a few years ago, things have improved.

Still, she and other students said, the district does need to update it.

The new code, said Khan (pictured), should change ​“the reason behind being dress coded. It’s about being professional — not because you’re distracting someone.”

Neither BOE members, students, or administrators could say what exactly a new dress code should look like. The administration has not yet put forward a proposal for a new policy.

Gannon said that the policy does need to be more gender neutral, but that the school also needs to provide students with some guidance on their clothing.

Senior Sidharth Singla said that one way to guide discussions about dress code could be to base a new policy on what people consider professional attire. He suggested bringing in a panel with people representing different professions to discuss what professional clothing means in their workplaces.

BOE members stressed that updating the dress code would not just be about changing the list of acceptable clothing. It would mean addressing how teachers enforce the policy, how they talk about students’ clothing, and how they teach topics like sexual harassment, assault, and consent.

BOE Policy Committee Chair Arturo Perez-Cabello said that in conversations with administrators, it became clear that ​“said matters go beyond policy.”

The presentation that the administration presented to the BOE Tuesday outlined the steps the district will take, and has already taken, to address the issues that surround dress code. All staff, according to the presentation, participated in a sexual harassment training at the beginning of the year. The district has scheduled multiple workshops on the dress code and its implementation. Staff, it said, are being trained to understand the purpose of the code, and how to enforce it with ​“the least impact on student learning and self-confidence.” The presentation also stressed the importance of health classes for teaching students about sexual harassment, assault, and consent.

Kaplan said that after the board passes a new dress code policy, it will then adopt new regulations about how faculty are supposed to enforce it.

A dress code, said Perez-Cabello, should focus on safety. Teachers need to be able to identify students in order to keep the school safe. That means students need to keep their heads uncovered. Religious headwear, of course, is the exception.

Superintendent Jody Goeler said he wants students ​“to dress as it would be appropriate to dress in a learning environment.” That includes safety. He said he’s ​“not a fan of flip-flops,” for example.

Goeler told the Independent that over the past few years, he hasn’t heard from teachers, administrators, or parents that the dress code policy is a problem. ​“When I talk to my building principals,” he said, ​“it isn’t something that they’ve spent a lot of time on.”

Nonetheless, he said he hopes to present a new policy to the board by the end of the calendar year.