Betsy Devos Urged to Drop Dress Codes

[Datlofff]

Because policing what people wear is wrong.

The state already does that, why not schools?

It's a rather offensive infringement on personal liberties for starters.

It's not.

*Ahem* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinker_v. ... l_District

"The court's 7–2 decision held that the First Amendment applied to public schools, and that administrators would have to demonstrate constitutionally valid reasons for any specific regulation of speech in the classroom. The court observed, "It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."

A girl showing her shoulders is not a constitutionally valid reason to have her freedom of expression infringed upon.

[Dylar]

The state already does that, why not schools?



It's not.

*Ahem* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinker_v. ... l_District

"The court's 7–2 decision held that the First Amendment applied to public schools, and that administrators would have to demonstrate constitutionally valid reasons for any specific regulation of speech in the classroom. The court observed, "It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."

A girl showing her shoulders is not a constitutionally valid reason to have her freedom of expression infringed upon.

How the hell is showing your shoulders "expression"

No, seriously. What are you expressing by showing shoulders?

[Alvecia]

e state already does that, why not schools?

It's a rather offensive infringement on personal liberties for starters.

It's not.

The freedom to wear what you want is definitionally a personal liberty. Preventing people from doing so is therefore logically an infringement on said personal liberty.

[Alvecia]

Right off the bat you're gonna have to equip officers with temperature/humidity sensors. Accurate ones as well.

Don't be ridiculous, NWS offices already know that information for a town.

Not to mention there quite the subjective slant on what you personally might consider warm enough.

That's not a resource issue, that's a "where to draw the line" issue.

They can give a general temp/humidity level for an area. But the temperature in the shade on a sunny day is going to be quite different than that of lying in the sun. Therefore to accurately measure whether or not the person was in violation of whatever temperature level you're gauging to be the acceptabe one, you need to take into account the temperature of the exact location they were in when they did so.

[Alvecia]

*Ahem* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinker_v. ... l_District

"The court's 7–2 decision held that the First Amendment applied to public schools, and that administrators would have to demonstrate constitutionally valid reasons for any specific regulation of speech in the classroom. The court observed, "It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."

A girl showing her shoulders is not a constitutionally valid reason to have her freedom of expression infringed upon.

How the hell is showing your shoulders "expression"

No, seriously. What are you expressing by showing shoulders?

Your shoulders. More generally, your style of dress.

[Datlofff]

*Ahem* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinker_v. ... l_District

"The court's 7–2 decision held that the First Amendment applied to public schools, and that administrators would have to demonstrate constitutionally valid reasons for any specific regulation of speech in the classroom. The court observed, "It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."

A girl showing her shoulders is not a constitutionally valid reason to have her freedom of expression infringed upon.

How the hell is showing your shoulders "expression"

No, seriously. What are you expressing by showing shoulders?

That you are a 16 year old slut of course. But even then, thats her right.

But on a more serious not, the Supreme Court already said, that you can't restrict dress code unless you have a constitutionally valid reason to, again, showing your shoulders isn't justification to strip rights away from students.

[Dylar]

How the hell is showing your shoulders "expression"

No, seriously. What are you expressing by showing shoulders?

That you are a 16 year old slut of course. But even then, thats her right.

But on a more serious not, the Supreme Court already said, that you can't restrict dress code unless you have a constitutionally valid reason to, again, showing your shoulders isn't justification to strip rights away from students.

No, the Supreme Court said that suspending students for wearing black armbands as a sign of protest for the Vietnam War was a violation of their First Amendment right to protest. So, unless there is some movement in America that's protesting something by showing their shoulders, it's perfectly reasonable for a school to enforce a dress code that does not allow shoulders to be shown.

[Datlofff]

That you are a 16 year old slut of course. But even then, thats her right.

But on a more serious not, the Supreme Court already said, that you can't restrict dress code unless you have a constitutionally valid reason to, again, showing your shoulders isn't justification to strip rights away from students.

No, the Supreme Court said that suspending students for wearing black armbands as a sign of protest for the Vietnam War was a violation of their First Amendment right to protest. So, unless there is some movement in America that's protesting something by showing their shoulders, it's perfectly reasonable for a school to enforce a dress code that does not allow shoulders to be shown.

"The court's 7–2 decision held that the First Amendment applied to public schools, and that administrators would have to demonstrate constitutionally valid reasons for any specific regulation of speech in the classroom. The court observed, "It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."

Where in that does it specifically apply to only black arm bands and protesting?

[Dylar]

No, the Supreme Court said that suspending students for wearing black armbands as a sign of protest for the Vietnam War was a violation of their First Amendment right to protest. So, unless there is some movement in America that's protesting something by showing their shoulders, it's perfectly reasonable for a school to enforce a dress code that does not allow shoulders to be shown.

"The court's 7–2 decision held that the First Amendment applied to public schools, and that administrators would have to demonstrate constitutionally valid reasons for any specific regulation of speech in the classroom. The court observed, "It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."

Where in that does it specifically apply to only black arm bands and protesting?

It doesn't, however show me in the quote where it says permitting shoulders to be shown in school is guaranteed by Tinker v Des Moine.

And before you start underlining the Freedom of Expression bit, I'd like to throw this in the pot.

Article 10 protects your right to hold your own opinions and to express them freely without government interference.

This includes the right to express your views aloud (for example through public protest and demonstrations) or through:

published articles, books or leaflets
television or radio broadcasting
works of art, and
the internet and social media.
The law also protects your freedom to receive information from other people by, for example, being part of an audience or reading a magazine.

which comes from this website
Note: Article 10 is from the ECHR

[Cekoviu]

How the hell is showing your shoulders "expression"

No, seriously. What are you expressing by showing shoulders?

That you are a 16 year old slut of course. But even then, thats her right.

"If you wear anything even slightly revealing of this arbitrary area, you're a slut"

[The Tomerlands]

...You can have a *** warning for trolling/baiting ***

If we have to escalate to bans, expect things to escalate quickly.

I haven't trolled or baited anyone.

Yeah, I wouldn't recommend purposefully misgendering people. That's a fast way to get a modslap. If you don't like me, put me on your ignore list and be done with it.

You should take your own advice. If you don't like me, ignore me instead of throwing insults at me.

Also, for future reference: my pronoun is 'modslapper'.

Back to topic.

Lol. I think he just "dictated your language" for you.

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

That you are a 16 year old slut of course. But even then, thats her right.

"If you wear anything even slightly revealing of this arbitrary area, you're a slut"

Slut isn't the right word, (an actually promiscuous woman can dress modestly, an immodestly dressed woman can theoretically be monogamous) but "vain" is a little vague, and "showing off sex appeal instead of more innocent aspects of beauty, but may or may not actually be promiscuous" doesn't exactly have any commonly used one-word synonym.

Perhaps the English language needs such a word, if only so that those who have a problem with provocative attire but not with promiscuity can express themselves with less ambiguity.

Let's face it, attire far more provocative than "showing shoulders" is widespread... not necessarily among teens, but then again, that's partly because dress codes have deterred it reasonably well. Without them, just picture the competition to outdo everyone else's narcissism. We need to draw the line somewhere.

It always did strike me as one-sided that the slippery slope argument is more often applied to dress codes than to attempts to weaken them.

[New Emeline]

How the hell is showing your shoulders "expression"

No, seriously. What are you expressing by showing shoulders?

That you are a 16 year old slut of course. But even then, thats her right.

But on a more serious not, the Supreme Court already said, that you can't restrict dress code unless you have a constitutionally valid reason to, again, showing your shoulders isn't justification to strip rights away from students.

Showing your shoulders makes you a slut??????

[Cekoviu]

"If you wear anything even slightly revealing of this arbitrary area, you're a slut"

Slut isn't the right word, (an actually promiscuous woman can dress modestly, an immodestly dressed woman can theoretically be monogamous) but "vain" is a little vague, and "showing off sex appeal instead of more innocent aspects of beauty, but may or may not actually be promiscuous" doesn't exactly have any commonly used one-word synonym.

Perhaps the English language needs such a word, if only so that those who have a problem with provocative attire but not with promiscuity can express themselves with less ambiguity.

Let's face it, attire far more provocative than "showing shoulders" is widespread... not necessarily among teens, but then again, that's partly because dress codes have deterred it reasonably well. Without them, just picture the competition to outdo everyone else's narcissism. We need to draw the line somewhere.

It always did strike me as one-sided that the slippery slope argument is more often applied to dress codes than to attempts to weaken them.

Tbh, I've never really seen somebody wearing clothes I'd consider "provocative." To be fair, I do live in a very religious (and thus obsessed with modesty) area, but even when outside of it I haven't seen anything overly sexual.
And anyway, I don't really want there to be a line drawn. Nudity should be legal and normal, not some mysterious sex-only thing.

[Serrus]

-snip-

Dude.
While I will freely admit we share a similar view towards children's rights (i.e. lots of them, preferably quickly), you are going about this in the wrong way. Work on it at the local level upwards, as the local level is what has most of the power. What you're doing is essentially attempting to contact the CEO of a nationwide chain to deal with a rude employee. Don't do that.

[Forsher]

Dress codes are inevitable. Caring about them is stupid. Therefore, dress codes are fine.

Also, this whole "distracting" thing is idiotic. The people who don't have the self control to not be distracted probably aren't focusing on learning anyhow. Actually, it probably makes the form of dress less distracting. When people go into the world, people don't normally wear uniforms, but the clothes deemed "distracting."

Where do you live?

Here, people dress very conservatively in every day life. Blue is basically the most vivid colour you'll see and it extends only as far as jeans. People stick to black and grey with occasional patterns... and pastelly ish colours. Even the much maligned active-wear in all situations crowd wear black (despite this being a genuinely vivid clothing category in general).

A large reason for this is that restrictive dress codes and uniforms are the normative work experience and within a given country everyone has the same ideas about what looks professional... and modest.

If you believe that clothes can meaningfully express anything (they can't... any message you perceive in anyone's clothes is a function wholly of your life experiences, i.e. you're projecting every single time), you either:

[*]accept that institutions get to choose what values they express, or [*]accept that it's just as arbitrary to stop someone wearing very short shorts as to force them to wear any clothes at all.

The reason this seems absurd to you is because expression is just neither here nor there/irrelevant to this topic. You might say "freedom of expression" a lot but your real reasoning is invariably different... because no-one ever unironically argues the first point or the second.

And don't try and spin any BS like "institutions can't have opinions" because that's just as dumb as saying it's stupid to say "America invaded the USA". Obviously we're talking about the people who voluntarily opted to work somewhere and who form the institution. Also, legal fictions are a thing.

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

Slut isn't the right word, (an actually promiscuous woman can dress modestly, an immodestly dressed woman can theoretically be monogamous) but "vain" is a little vague, and "showing off sex appeal instead of more innocent aspects of beauty, but may or may not actually be promiscuous" doesn't exactly have any commonly used one-word synonym.

Perhaps the English language needs such a word, if only so that those who have a problem with provocative attire but not with promiscuity can express themselves with less ambiguity.

Let's face it, attire far more provocative than "showing shoulders" is widespread... not necessarily among teens, but then again, that's partly because dress codes have deterred it reasonably well. Without them, just picture the competition to outdo everyone else's narcissism. We need to draw the line somewhere.

It always did strike me as one-sided that the slippery slope argument is more often applied to dress codes than to attempts to weaken them.

Tbh, I've never really seen somebody wearing clothes I'd consider "provocative." To be fair, I do live in a very religious (and thus obsessed with modesty) area, but even when outside of it I haven't seen anything overly sexual.
And anyway, I don't really want there to be a line drawn. Nudity should be legal and normal, not some mysterious sex-only thing.

I'm in a pretty cold climate most of the year, especially the school year, so nature's deterred what dress codes didn't.

No culture's been known to normalize public nudity and remain peaceful, prosperous, and civilized. It's almost as if flesh appeals to the less rational part of our brains or something.

[The Tomerlands]

"If you wear anything even slightly revealing of this arbitrary area, you're a slut"

Slut isn't the right word, (an actually promiscuous woman can dress modestly, an immodestly dressed woman can theoretically be monogamous) but "vain" is a little vague, and "showing off sex appeal instead of more innocent aspects of beauty, but may or may not actually be promiscuous" doesn't exactly have any commonly used one-word synonym.

Perhaps the English language needs such a word, if only so that those who have a problem with provocative attire but not with promiscuity can express themselves with less ambiguity.

Let's face it, attire far more provocative than "showing shoulders" is widespread... not necessarily among teens, but then again, that's partly because dress codes have deterred it reasonably well. Without them, just picture the competition to outdo everyone else's narcissism. We need to draw the line somewhere.

It always did strike me as one-sided that the slippery slope argument is more often applied to dress codes than to attempts to weaken them.

It's not narcissism. It's just a style of dress that's popular. And if it, so what? What's the problem?

[Katganistan]

That you are a 16 year old slut of course. But even then, thats her right.

But on a more serious not, the Supreme Court already said, that you can't restrict dress code unless you have a constitutionally valid reason to, again, showing your shoulders isn't justification to strip rights away from students.

Showing your shoulders makes you a slut??????

And hair.
And legs.
And ANKLES.

[Krasny-Volny]

I had a classmate in high school who owned a Nazi SS uniform.

He constantly harped about wanting to wear it to school, but thank goodness he was never permitted to do so (despite endless wheedling of the principal).

[Krasny-Volny]

*Ahem* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinker_v. ... l_District

"The court's 7–2 decision held that the First Amendment applied to public schools, and that administrators would have to demonstrate constitutionally valid reasons for any specific regulation of speech in the classroom. The court observed, "It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."

A girl showing her shoulders is not a constitutionally valid reason to have her freedom of expression infringed upon.

How the hell is showing your shoulders "expression"

No, seriously. What are you expressing by showing shoulders?

That you work them most Tuesdays and Thursdays and can do a 75 lb military press.

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

Slut isn't the right word, (an actually promiscuous woman can dress modestly, an immodestly dressed woman can theoretically be monogamous) but "vain" is a little vague, and "showing off sex appeal instead of more innocent aspects of beauty, but may or may not actually be promiscuous" doesn't exactly have any commonly used one-word synonym.

Perhaps the English language needs such a word, if only so that those who have a problem with provocative attire but not with promiscuity can express themselves with less ambiguity.

Let's face it, attire far more provocative than "showing shoulders" is widespread... not necessarily among teens, but then again, that's partly because dress codes have deterred it reasonably well. Without them, just picture the competition to outdo everyone else's narcissism. We need to draw the line somewhere.

It always did strike me as one-sided that the slippery slope argument is more often applied to dress codes than to attempts to weaken them.

It's not narcissism. It's just a style of dress that's popular. And if it, so what? What's the problem?

What's popular isn't always right, and quite frankly, it still begs the question of what gave such attire such popularity in the first place.

[Ors Might]

Not really seeing the problem with having a school dress code. As a student, I’m in that class to learn the information necessary to pass and it’s difficult enough as it is for myself as well as others to concentrate without classmates dressing up as a Klansman or a stripper one day. And yes, I know people who’d likely do something to that effect. Is the dress code unnecessarily strict at times? Yes. For example, students aren’t allowed to wear caps, for some odd reason. But that doesn’t discredit the idea of a school dress code itself.

[Tahar Joblis]

Well, when dress codes seem purpose written to police how women dress, with almost nothing that really covers males...

If you actually read the dress codes of schools, they usually do not restrict girls' attire more than boys' attire, and frequently restrict boys' attire more than girls' attire (e.g., skirts / dresses not on list of attire permissible for boys). Many dress code regulations specifically target boys' attire (e.g., saggy pants).

Nor are boys in practice exempt from enforcement actions at most schools.

We're hearing "sexist" for some combination of the following reasons.

1. It used to be the case that girls were typically required to wear skirts under dress codes. This is almost never the case in the US now, but there was a time in the not-too-distant-past where complaints from girls that dress codes were sexist had some merit.

2. The theme of calling anything that bothers a girl / woman sexist whether or not stereotyping or discrimination are actually involved.

3. Girls feel more strongly about dress codes, and run afoul of them in similar ways as a population.

Whether #3 this is motivated by fashion or a desire to attract the attention of teenage boys, it's a reality that teenage girls routinely test dress codes in very similar ways, and have been doing for a very long time. Many of the grandmothers of current children were stealthily rolling up the hems of their skirts to shorten them back when they were teenage girls.

Teenage girls also tend to care a lot more about clothing than teenage boys, on average.

In actuality, dress codes often are sexist, but sexist by virtue of the fact that they restrict boys' clothing more heavily than girls' clothing. If you dressed a boy in an outfit that got a girl sent home, he would almost certainly also be sent home for dress code violations; the converse and inverse cases, however, are not true.

This can and should be challenged and changed, but that's going to have to take place at the local level.

[Kyneland]

I don’t see anything wrong with dress codes. If anything, they’re far greater than allowing students to wear what they wish.