Keeping it classy in the classroom

If I walked up to you and told you your lack of clothing distracted me from my studies and demanded you dress yourself decently for the sake of my education, how would you react?

Besides calling me a few choice words, you’d think I was being outrageous, right? Just as equally outrageous would be a college dress code, which is what one student at the University of Montana is pushing for.

Virginia Cleveland, a self proclaimed raging Republican, wrote an article (http://uwire.com/Article.aspx?id=3873188)concerning the way her fellow students dressed. From what her article states, most of the women attend class dressed as strippers, while the men style their hair in hippie-length dreadlocks. Cleveland is ‘determined to see a dress code enforced on [this] campus’ because the scandalous attire detracts from her studies. Cleveland feels she has the right to insist what students wear because she pays tuition.

I can understand how it might be shocking to notice fellow students walking around in barely-there skirts, but any good student wouldn’t let the way someone else dresses distract them from their schoolwork. It is up to the University to decide what is deemed as appropriate college-wear, not students.

What is interesting about Cleveland’s article is that she is judging the girls sporting ‘slutty outfits’ and ‘pseudohippies’ on her campus based on what they are wearing. And although clothes do reflect the person underneath, there is more to a person than the labels on their skin or how much of the epidermis is exposed.

Grow up. What if the dress code was reversed, and students were forced to strip down instead of covering up? I too pay tuition, and maybe exposed skin is what gets me through the day. No doubt many uptight, sexually-repressed conservatives would complain. Maybe Cleveland has personal reasons for wanting a dress code;’ she isn’t getting any and is jealous of her fellow students who do, or she’s insecure about her looks. Whatever the case may be, it is unfair to force opinions/ideals on someone else.
Cleveland mentions that University of Montana girls wear ‘outfits that merely consist of a T-shirt, tights and Ugg boots.’ While many Fairfield women do the same, I don’t really see much of a problem with the way students dress here (unless of course, genitals are exposed – that’s just indecent).

Fairfield definitely does not need a dress code. As far as I can tell, there are no strippers or pseudo-hippies on campus. For the most part, students are dressed appropriately during the day. Nighttime is when the short skirts and tight pants are on display. For the guys, very few of them have hippie-length hair. A few bushy beards, but no outrageous hair.

Even if a dress code were enforced here, it wouldn’t be very successful. Too many people favor dressing in a comfortable manner over a casual workplace style. Since most students come from high schools with a dress code, college allows kids to dress how they want, expressing themselves through their actions and the clothes they wear.’

The reason there isn’t a dress code in college is because it is college. Students are expected to behave and act like adults. This means eventually dressing like one. But college is a learning process and students will make a gradual transition from casual to appropriate.

Over the course of four years, students will learn what is and isn’t appropriate to wear for the workforce. But for now, students should be able to just relax and enjoy the fact that they can wear as much or as little as they want, oblivious to the fact that some uptight classmate may or may not be judging them.