Students want a safe learning environment that will empower them to face the world. A dress code will not protect them if efforts are not taken to change mindsets.
To say that colleges are institutions of learning is to say less. For a student, the years of college education is the phase of exploring oneself and creating an identity. Clothing, in this context becomes the very base of this process of growth, and the ‘dress code’ has become a widely discussed topic.
For a few years now, professional degree colleges have been imposing a strict dress code on students. While young men are asked to wear formal pants and shirts, the women are expected to dress in salwar suits with the mandatory dupatta, or in a minority of institutes, especially privately-managed colleges, western formal attire is given a green signal. Private engineering colleges are well-known in the state of Tamil Nadu for their strict dress code, which students do not even dream of sidestepping. Says Aishwarya, a third-year student of a well-reputed engineering college, “Of course, it’s terribly boring to wear salwar suits every single day of my college life. But I don’t dare to dress otherwise because I’ll be black-marked and it will affect my grades.”
The ruling
The dress code debate was back in the news after the Tamil Nadu Directorate of Collegiate Education (DCE) decided to introduce a dress code for all the 503 arts and science colleges under its wing. Though every college handbook or calendar has a note clearly informing students to present themselves in decent, neat clothing, this universal rule to be passed by DCE has touched the wrong nerve in students by banning jeans and T-shirts. “How can anyone tell me what to wear in the first place, and then penalise me for not doing so? Don’t I have the right to wear what I want?” asks a stumped Priyadharshini, a student of zoology.
A student is exposed to a variety of issues in college. Clothes become the first tool for the student’s freedom of expression. As a nation with diverse cultures and a unique type of clothing for each one of its states, it is important to understand how clothes give identity to persons. To clamp the expression of a person’s identity and wanting to clone students through their clothing seems a monstrous idea. Insists Adya, a social work student, “We remember people by what they wear and relate people to their clothes. Jawaharlal Nehru’s rose is one of many examples, and no one demanded that he not wear it.”
Several students are asking the same question: Clothes are an integral part of expressing ourselves; why must we wear anything we don’t relate to? After twelve years of schooling spent wearing uniforms, students merely have a span of five years to experiment with clothes before moving on to jobs that require them to be dressed in a certain way. “What will it be next? Uniforms? Will we be told how to wear our hair, be banned from using cosmetics?” demands Samantha, a student of visual communication.
Freedom of expression
The DCE and college managements justify the order by claiming it as a means to formalise the learning environment and keeping out T-shirts with profane phrases printed on them. But both indecency and profanity are grey areas, best left to the discretion of the individual. Rohan, a student of physics, says, “Students are told to dress decently. No one comes to college in nightwear or beachwear, and that is being decent for us. We live in an age of low-waist jeans, and we wear them, but why is that considered indecent? Students wear anything that is considered cool by our peers. T-shirts with phrases on them are not worn to intentionally hurt anyone’s sentiments. But if they are hurt, what can one do about it?”
There are cases when students misuse the freedom given to them, taking the chance to wear shorts or spaghettis because they have been allowed to wear capris and sleeveless tops. “These are one-off cases. We immediately talk to the student and ensure she does not repeat it. An universal rule is not the answer to this,” says a professor of business management from a reputed girls’ college in Chennai.
Knee-jerk reaction
The order from DCE is not a stand-alone case, as universities and colleges across the country are beginning to increase regulations on dress code and severely coming down on students who break rules. All reputed colleges of the country are on the list, including Delhi University and Christ University. While a gender neutered broad regulation with space for debate is welcome, Aligarh Muslim University and MS Ramaiah Institute of technology, Bangalore, have rules only for women. It is not so surprising to note that these rules are being formulated in the wake of the numerous cases of sexual violence reported in the media, and it becomes essential to question the roots of this ideology.
The direction taken by governing bodies and institutions alike is a cause of worry. Sexual violence is an issue that needs to be tackled at grass-roots level, with a multi-pronged approach. Ensuring that students follow a dress code in college does not mean they will be safe. Bluntly put, safe dressing is not the equivalent of sexual safety. A college in Chandigarh recently fined four girls for breaking the dress code by wearing T-shirts. Asks a student mentor from a co-educational college, “Girls come to college in salwar suits, but talk of being subjected to sexual abuse on trains and buses. They are eve-teased on the roads, sometimes just outside college. How is the dress code helping?”
Parents, in several cases wishing the safety of their children, are pushing for these rules. There are some who beg to differ. Anu Ramesh, a Chennai-based mother of two girls, says, “If my daughters cannot feel safe wearing what they desire in a structured learning environment like a college, how will they learn to face the world outside? Colleges must be concentrating their efforts on changing the mindsets of today’s youngsters to accept and respect people unconditionally, instead of superficially tackling the issue with a dress code.”
Biased rules
While the shift towards world class education is being spoken about, it is alarming that the very same institutes are imposing a dress code only for girls. The college years could be used as a means to empower women students by engaging in open dialogue about the issue, make them feel safe in their own skin and teach them to speak up against sexual violence, as an alternative to policing them with dress codes which come across as a sad means to protect them.
Experimenting with clothes also enables students to evolve in understanding their sexuality. This is very essential for the growth of a person, says Lakshmi, a psychologist. “The college years must be given to students to explore their sexuality and learn where their comfort zone lies. A dress code on campus will curb that growth.”
Hordes of students give as much importance to the culture of the institution as much as to the quality of education. A liberal campus where creativity and freethinking are encouraged score high among students. When the management suddenly sprouts a rule like this on students, it leaves them disappointed. The Madras Christian College, with its 175-year-old legacy is widely known for its campus culture. When current students were informed of a stricter dress code, it put them in a spot as this is not what they had signed up. Siddharth, a student of botany, says, “I was so excited to belong to this college. I believed I would have the freedom to at least choose want I want to wear, and not be a rule-breaker.” MCC finally had to drop the plan.
For students from different socio-economic backgrounds, a sudden shift will mean more expenditure than expected, because formal clothing or salwar suits are more expensive than a pair of denims and T-shirts. Also, having to change one’s wardrobe to college will not be easy on a student’s pocket. Asserting that jeans are most comfortable, easy to maintain, can be worn for several days together, and paired easily with shirts, T-shirts and kurtas, students say that banning jeans to college is the biggest dampener.
Virtual protests
This is certainly not going down well with students. Students have taken to online social media forums to express their dissent. In some colleges such as Kybher Medical College, Peshawar, Aligarh Muslim University, Lucknow, Vogue Institute of Fashion, Bangalore, Muralidhar Girls College, Kolkata, and Thiruthangal Nadar College, Selavayal, students have organised protests within the college campus against dress code rules. While petitions are being signed and protests are being organised, it is disheartening that students are divided. While some students feel very strongly about the curb on clothing, there are several who do not mind succumbing to the rules, just wanting to get their college degrees without running into trouble. While there are scores of students condemning the rule on Facebook and Twitter and lamenting about the sorry state of affairs, there are only a handful who are willing to address it with college managements. “I don’t want to be a trouble maker. It’s not that big a deal to me – I’d rather stick to the rules and wear what I want to outside college. I’m not going to risk my degree for anything”, says Sandeep, a student of English literature. While freshers are too new to the college to protest, final-year students sometimes brush it off saying that they are leaving soon anyway. Second-year students don’t want organise themselves as they have to be at the institution for another year, not wanting to put themselves in the bad books of the management.
While students are busy doing what they can to get rid of the rule, it seems as if it is more to protect individual identity and freedom, to having a good time in their college years, rather than addressing the larger issue of the dress code. Students from colleges that do not have a dress code, such as Fergusson College, Pune, are not engaging with the issue that could potentially affect them. On other campuses, students have met the demands of the management half way by agreeing to dress with sleeves, and ankle-length clothes.
Arts college students are asking why there should be a dress code in an ‘Arts’ college and that it is okay to have one at professional colleges. Students of girls’ colleges want to know why they have to suffer the rule, considering they don’t go to a co-educational institute. Questions about why a dress code should exist in the first place, what the motive is behind a rule like this and issues of moral policing and body disciplining are not being brought up by students across the country.
First it was the ban against use of cell phones on campus, now it is setting standards for apparel, what will it be next for students? By not collectively engaging in a debate now, students are setting themselves up for worse. In the scenario where college managements are banning students from wearing T-shirts because of phrases written on them, it will be interesting to see if they will take into consideration students pleas, or turn a deaf ear to the protests.
Body disciplining
Colleges are renowned as places for starting social change and creating revolutionary thinkers and campuses are the first places to express a strong opinion. Are we moving away from such liberal and freethinking traditions, to churn out leaders who are told what to think? Madumitta Dutta, a social activist, says, “The idea of a dress code sounds ridiculous and I do not understand where these ideas come from. In college, students have become adults and they should be allowed to make choices of their own. Even twenty years ago this was not there. Now we’re supposedly modern, and this is what we come up with? This is a different sort of policing. On one hand we are claiming education to be modern, free and liberal but we are piling up all these rules on students. Colleges today are mass producing students who fit into a specific category, by schooling and policing them. The logic is flawed.”
Dutta compares the state of affairs to French social theorist Michel Faucault’s Bio Power. “I don’t think this is about the dress. A certain kind of control is being exerted on students’ bodies, freedom, expression, and even sexuality. It’s almost like the state is controlling bodies,” she says.
Asserting that there is a disconnect in understanding youth, Dutta says that colleges are trying to discipline them through meaningless methods, which are bound to backfire. On sexual violence, she says, “This is a knee-jerk response to sexual violence where managements, not wanting an iota of rebellion are body disciplining students by making them wear certain kinds of clothes.”
In most colleges across the globe, students are allowed to wear to class what is comfortable for them and only ensuring it is appropriate clothing. But what is appropriate is left to the discretion of students. Why are we in modern, growing incredible India still stressing over a student’s dress? For a truly shining India, we should be encouraging social change from the grass-roots instead of attacking issues superficially. As a nation that allows it 18-year-olds to choose who should run the country, is it not high time that we let students decide for themselves what they should be wearing to class?
— seker.archanaa@gmail.com
