Can your dress code determine your right to education? When students of San Benito High School, California returned to school for a new term, something unexpected happened. The administration sent around 20 girls back home for wearing off-shoulder shirts and ‘violating’ the dress code.
Calling out sexism and throwing light on the absurdity of this rule, some of the boys in the school decided to protest against the authorities by turning up in off-shoulder shirts themselves.
The school says wearing off-shoulder tops has been banned for years but was enforced only on August 14, according to Yahoo Style.
“The dress code policy hasn’t been an issue the past two years I have been here. I would regularly wear off-the-shoulder shirts and it was okay and it would be the same with a lot of the other girls,” says a junior female student to Yahoo Style, on condition of anonymity.
The 16-year-old says that off-the-shoulder is a very big trend in the fashion industry and is not harming anyone physically. “I think it is ridiculous how we have to fight against [the administration] to wear a shirt that is not harming anyone.”
A girl with the Twitter handle @chadya_acosta shared a series of tweets captioned it: “thank you to everyone who participated today!”
thank you to everyone who participated today was v successful sbhs can suck it screw the dress code y'all ain't ready for tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/DnyIIk2l2U
— chads (@chadya_acosta) August 14, 2017
Other students too joined in, in solidarity:
"I didn't think we were actually gonna do this"
— Brody (@brodycascio) August 15, 2017
"Yeah me either but fuck it" pic.twitter.com/at8VRIM8Er
damn. pic.twitter.com/JvsSGStcnv
— l3IlANI (@leilanikiana03) August 14, 2017
Someone find me her @ 🤤 pic.twitter.com/AsZqzgwMhH
— Mawrk (@Holfwailey) August 15, 2017
Since they wanna dress code all girls for showing too much shoulder, EXPLAIN THIS pic.twitter.com/HubvYN3dtC
— Michael Gutierrez (@helloitsmikey_) August 15, 2017
The school released a written clarification countering ‘the notion that strapless shirts are a distraction to male students’. The Principal said that the school neither supports, nor believes it to be an appropriate reason to ban the same.
The actual reason for enforcing such a dress code, according to the statement, was to prevent the possibility of any student from being a victim to any incident where they could intentionally or unintentionally be humiliated.
Posted by San Benito High School on Saturday, 19 August 2017
