Some stories of the malfunctioning of ethics alarms in school administrators make me want to weep, go postal, or begin a national movement to bring down the public school system for good, so untrustworthy are its stewards.
This one made me want to do all three.
The incompetent and cruel administrators at Harrisburg’s Sci-Tech High School told student Alexus Miller Wigfall that she would be suspended because the prom dress she wore was “too revealing.” The school’s dress code, like most dress codes, is so badly worded that it defies reasonable construction: this one requires “all body parts” to be covered, suggesting that the only acceptable prom dress would be something like this…
Cute!
Alexus’ mother had the lovely red prom dress made especially for her daughter by a seamstress, and even altered it, deciding against a leg slit, to be on the safe side. She was stunned that her daughter was told that she was to be punished for a non-conforming dress. “I couldn’t believe it,” she told the news media. “I don’t see anything wrong with that dress. What do they want her to wear, a turtleneck?”
See the photo above, Mom.
Alexus’ mother thinks the school discriminated against her daughter because her daughter is plus-sized. That’s one good theory; another is that the administrators just wanted to make a young woman feel bad about herself because they are petty, mean-spirited, incompetent fools, and because they can. Alexus says the assistant principal who announced the suspension told her, “You have more boobs than other girls. The other girls have less to show.” That kind of statement might sustain a sexual harassment lawsuit if the teacher said it to a secretary. And even by that (moronic) standard, the student’s dress was modest and tasteful.
It appears that the school has now been shamed sufficiently in various on-line publications that it has withdrawn the suspension threat. That doesn’t mean that it won’t find other wasy to make Alexus miserable to punish her for daring to make her abuse a national spectacle. As it is, the school’s gratuitous insult, abuse of power and common sense vacuum has cast a shadow over what should be an experience of unalloyed joy for a young woman. Now those cherished memories will be marred by Alexus recalling the cruelty of those in charge of her education.
Was this fat-shaming, as several critics have argued? Yes, but that’s far less important than the issues that all examples of student abuse raise. I know I’ve stated those issues many times before; from now on, I’m going to refer to them as The Seven Hows:
How can parents in good conscience entrust their children to people capable of such miserable, unethical conduct?
How can parents trust an institution, the public school system, that continues to have disgraceful episodes like this?
How can parents trust a profession that admits members this incapable of competence, common sense, empathy, consideration, fairness, proportion, or kindness?
How can the educational profession tolerate itself?
How can students go through the public school system and not emerge cynical, angry, and distrustful of authority?
How can advocates still argue for increased funding for education as a panacea for all social ills (as in the current Baltimore police controversy) when any increased funds will be spent on the kind of professional who behaves, thinks, and reasons like Sci-Tech High School’s administrators?
How long will the idealized myth of public education drive education policy, rather than public education’s ugly reality?
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Pointer: Fred
Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts, and seek written permission when appropriate. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work or property was used in any way without proper attribution, credit or permission, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at jamproethics@verizon.net.
Ethics Alarms 
Wow. The school was wrong.
That being said, the dress is a bit revealing (in my opinion) for a teenager. But that’s a call for the parents to make, not the school.
I disagree.
It’s 100% up to the school to make and enforce dress code policies, and the parents should have somewhere between little and no input into it (the little being broad changes they would like to see, as opposed to exceptions for their little snowflake). The caveat to this is that every student should be held to the identical standard. It doesn’t matter that this teen had “more boob to show” if dress code allowed a low neckline. The problem with the dress code is the vagueness in which it was written, not that it exists.
And more, as much as I disapprove generally of the sexualisation of teenagers, part of the role of high school should be to prepared their charges for the rigors of the real world. Pretending sex doesn’t exists until the moment students graduate does no one any favors. This was a prom.
Citizen — your dress is too revealing! Citizen, stop immediately! Go home and don the proper uniform. Transmission complete.
From you? Really? A dress code is totalitarian? I’ll remember this the next time you’re on a “the government should ____” roll.
This is repression, man, just like you saying that I don’t have the right to selectively interpret the Bill of Rights, and enforce my will on others for their own good ! Don’t you know the difference between conservative totalitarianism, and liberal benevolence? Sounds like you need a little modern-day public school re-education yourself, teabagger! (Stand by for high-velocity spinning.
I prefer “fedora-wearing. racist, homophobic, misogynist, neck-beard shitlord” to “teabagger”, myself. But that’s just me.
Hey! I’m a shitlord too! I never thought I’d run into another person on this site who knew what that meant.
There’s actually a quiz for that: http://www.checkmyprivilege.com/checkit (Read the testimonials; I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time.)
And hey, wouldn’t you know it…I’m a member of the Lordship, too.
I am a member of The Patriarchy, with a score of 175 (Alpha-Prime High Shitlord). My card is in the mail. Meanwhile, I can print out a temporary permit, and start oppressing people and raping Mother Earth.
I just sent a box of malaria mosquitos to Nepal. Take that, poor people!
I disagree.
The parents should have input into the dress code, but that should be decided at community-school meetings, beforehand, and once decided through a deliberative method, be applied consistently. I agree, the parents should not have input after the dress code is established. But no one cares about school meetings anymore.
I think we actually agree. And maybe I put it poorly, but I thought I covered it when I said “(the little being broad changes they would like to see, as opposed to exceptions for their little snowflake)” Community-School meetings would be a great place to have that input. My point was more against a situation where individual parents made individual policies for their individual children.
But that’s just it though-
Barring a stated policy, then it is up to the parents to make their own individual policies for their individual children…
With a stated policy in place, the problem isn’t parents then, but consistent application.
I don’t know…. I think you’re overanalysing. In cases where there is no policy or law, everything has to be up to someone, and whether that someone is the parent or the child will depend on the situation.
But that hits me as academic… Because in this case there WAS a policy. It was a purposefully vague policy, but it was there, and so the problem becomes the consistent application of that policy.
Too bad there’s not a dress code for teachers. When I was in high school, the male teachers wore shirts with ties and slacks and the female teachers wore dresses (hitting below the knee). Nowadays it seems like the teachers are in some kind of contest to see who can dress down the most–with tee shirts and jeans. I personally think that a teacher nicely dressed commands more respect than one who can hardly be distinguished from the students. I once read somewhere that during the Second World War, the BBC required its radio announcers to wear tuxedos, because it they did, they would sound like they were wearing tuxedos.
I think the contest is about who can sleep with the most students before close of business each day.
This is how a typical PTA meeding goes these days: “Here are the new policies we’ll be ramming down your throat. A designated question-asker will now softball-pitch some trivial irrelevancies”.
Oh, for Christ’s sake! I misspelled “mead”. Everyone gets together to discuss school policy while getting drunk on mead.
What school district do you live in? I want to move there and join the PTA.
Hartford, CT.
Don’t come here if you can avoid it. It’s a “Utopia”.
I’m all for (equally enforced) school dress codes, even strict ones, but this is honestly the most modest prom dress I have ever seen!
You must be kidding! Have you seen what teen and pre-teen girls wear on STREETS? Half of them look like hookers. A prom dress that shows cleavage only because the young woman in question DOES have cleavage, is far more tasteful than what you see teenage girls wearing as “every day” apparel. Open your eyes!
On one of the links, there are photos of what some of the other girls wore without comment or punishment. Alexus was singled out for humiliation. If you were the mother, Beth, what would you do?
(1). If I were the mother, I wouldn’t have let my teenager daughter show that much cleavage — whether she was a size 2 or a plus 2.
(2) BUT, if my daughter was being singled out for the same behavior that other kids were getting a pass on? Well … heads would roll. Starting with the idiots who made this call, then the administrators who shamed her, then the school board.
Have I mentioned that we go to private schools?
do you honestly think such things don’t happen in private schools\?
In general, when schools venture into judging dress codes – unless they’re in the context of a full-on uniform – they’re just begging for trouble.
I checked the links; the dress in question is a heck of a lot less revealing than some of the others. But then, those teens were much more svelte than that of Alexis’. I am, sadly, coming to the same conclusion about public school administrators as you, Jack, especially after a recent experience with the same involving my stepson. Things only go by the book when they want them to.
The answer to your questions are that we don’t have a choice, it is required by the government.
(1) The government has mandatory compulsory education.
(2) In many places there are no private schools or they are prohibitively expensive because we have to pay for the public school as well.
(3) Not everyone has the financial means or the educational background required to homeschool their children in all subjects.
In short, we have to allow our kids to be abused because we are no longer citizens, we are subjects. How can we stop it? We can elect people to the school board, but the school board can’t fire all the teachers and principals. Even if you did, the only people with the required qualifications are morons just like the ones you fired. You can’t hire competent people because the state and accreditation bodies won’t allow it. You could get a ballot initiative together to eliminate the entire public school system. Assuming you could prevail over the mocking media assault and the public school union lobby and the initiative passed, the state would just ignore it. My state passed a ballot initiative that modified the state Constitution to eliminate a state agency that was famously incompetent and was not fulfilling its mission. The initiative passed. The agency still exists. Despite the ballot item clearly stating that it was abolishing the agency, the state decided that the word ‘abolish’ just meant that the director had to retire.
You hit the nail right on the head with (1).
And what will their answer be to the prevalence of zero-tolerance policies?
I don’t see it as “fat shaming” as much as I see it as inconsistently applied policies. I looked at the links you provided as well as others and saw other plus-sized girls dressed in similarly revealing styles. The fact the mother left any pictures of the other plus-sized girls out falls under one (or more) ethical falsehoods (straw man).
I would agree that the school dress codes in our nation need serious overhaul. As you eluded to, they tend to be ambiguously worded. They also tend to be written in a way that, to even the most biased reader, it is obvious they only target what females wear.
My problem with this, as well as the other similar stories that crop up at prom time every year, is the dress code has been in place all year (if not many) and the issue could be addressed the entire time. Most of the kids in these stories are Juniors and Seniors, meaning they have known the dress code for three or four years. Yet, they wait until now to speak out against it?
A good faith effort to comply with the dress code, as in this case, should be considered compliance.
Ding Ding Ding!
Of course that is the answer.
Point taken. She likely was attempting a good faith effort at compliance, though I still believe many of the other such stories are not that.
Reason #348 why my kids will attend parochial school. Added bonus: no debates about dress code.
This incident is further evidence that public education is obsolete.
How can parents in good conscience entrust their children to people capable of such miserable, unethical conduct?
I don’t know. The only thing I can come up with is that most times, you don’t know know they’re capable of that kind of conduct until they surprise you by actually doing it.
How can parents trust an institution, the public school system, that continues to have disgraceful episodes like this?
I don’t know. There are a lot of individuals in the system who have proved their competence and good intentions to me beyond doubt — but my trust in the institution as a whole has been hovering near zero for a long time.
My daughter’s school hasn’t done anything like this that I know of, but their rules are set up for it. They have a dress code that’s so blatantly (and obviously unintentionally) sexist and unenforceable that she and her friends seriously contemplated flouting it together on purpose, just to make a point. And several of her friends are devoutly Mormon, so if their everyday dress standards can violate code, you know it’s ridiculous.
It’s a stupid rule, and I don’t know why the school insists on sending it home to the parents at the beginning of every school year. If they ever try to enforce it, they’ll have a full-on parent-and-student rebellion on their hands.
How can parents trust a profession that admits members this incapable of competence, common sense, empathy, consideration, fairness, proportion, or kindness?
I don’t know. I don’t trust teachers as a profession anymore, and that’s a sad thing. Sad at least in part because I know a lot of dedicated, kind, and competent teachers and education professionals who are absolutely trustworthy. Unfortunately, there seems to be an endless supply of authoritarian leftist buffoons in the system, and you never know when your kid is going to suffer from their attentions.
It also might not be trust, but necessity.
I like to think that I could teach my kids at home in most subjects, but there’s that inconvenient thing where I work away from home 10 hours a day. With most households being either single-parent or dual-income — for people in my income bracket (professional work, but not very highly paid), it takes two full-time workers to keep a household afloat these days — the only way your kids are going to get an education is through the public school system, because you may not be home during daytime hours to do it. Private school could be an option, but I’m not convinced that it’s any better — and it’s very expensive. Most of us don’t have that kind of money. (I sure don’t.) And a lot of people aren’t equipped to home-school their children anyway.
How can the educational profession tolerate itself?
I don’t know. I really don’t. How can the far left in general tolerate itself? They’re pretty much the same thing at this point. Actually, I do have an idea: it’s the Dunning-Kruger effect. They’re too incompetent to know that they’re incompetent.
How can students go through the public school system and not emerge cynical, angry, and distrustful of authority?
I don’t know. (I’m saying that a lot.) I think my kids will probably manage it — although that’s probably due to luck (their schools haven’t done anything terribly stupid yet), blissful unawareness (they don’t read the news like I do), and their own kind and forgiving nature more than anything else.
But we’ve got a few years left before they escape the system, so I shouldn’t count my eggs yet.
I’m cynical, angry, and distrustful of authority, and I actually had a reasonably okay school experience, all things considered (at least the brain-dead assholes in my schools were students, not teachers). It’s public events of the last decade or so that have pushed me over the edge that way.
How can advocates still argue for increased funding for education as a panacea for all social ills (as in the current Baltimore police controversy) when any increased funds will be spent on the kind of professional who behaves, thinks, and reasons like Sci-Tech High School’s administrators?
See above: Dunning-Kruger. It’s the only explanation I can think of.
But wait…don’t you know that education and awareness are magical? In sufficient quantities, they can cure anything. The Susan G. Komen and Livestrong foundations are poised to eradicate cancer in one perfectly timed burst of universal awareness. And if they can do it, the education system can eradicate its target in the same way. (Personally I don’t think it’ll work, but I’m going to stay out of their sights just in case.)
How long will the idealized myth of public education stop driving education policy, rather than public education’s ugly reality?
(Stop? I think you meant keep.) For a long, long time, I’m afraid. Reality and actual outcomes have no place in the way of the social justice warriors.
We’ve been sending our kids to Catholic school, at some expense. Much to our dismay, there seems to be no escaping Commie Core. It tells you something when hundreds of prominent educators have nothing good to say about it, but it’s implemented nonetheless, in much the same way as obamacare; under cover of darkness, and accompanied by lies, bribes, & threats. I’m seriously considering forming a group, something like “Catholic School Parents Against Common Core. Why should we pay even more for the privilege of having our children dumbed-down and brai9nwashed? Considering that the schools in our diocese are barely breaking even, a little pressure might yield the desired results.
That certainly is moronic. She clearly has two.
She has back boobs.
That would be “fewer” not “less,” but the joke is worth the imprecision.
The moronic part isn’t the “less”, it’s the “more”. There is no imprecision in pointing out that she doesn’t have more boobs than the other girls typically have.
As I mentioned in a previous comment, we have morons teaching kids to be morons. Until and unless we value education, pay teachers a real living wage that would support a family, while at the same time firing the incompetent ones and get rid of the unions that allow or force atrocities like the one in NY City — where more than 300 teachers — deemed “unfit” for the classroom — are warehoused ON FULL SALARY where they show up every day, read, do crossword puzzles (the “easy” versions, I’m sure), knit, etc. — the public schools will never improve. They CANNOT be fired, so the NYC school budget includes full salary and benefits for teachers deemed by their own moronic administrators “unfit.” We are doomed.
What are the wages of teachers?
If they’re teaching Common Core, too much.
1. This school does not have a policy at all. When I was a child, my school had a real dress code. It specified, among other things, exactly the minimum number of inches below the knee that a skirt must extend, and the principal checked for compliance with a ruler. But this school’s so-called “written policy” consists of meaningless words. No student can know whether or not she is in compliance until a cruel and self-righteous school official singles her out for punishment. This school and its administrators are, literally, lawless.
2. For who think Alexus’ dress is too revealing: Have you seen the movie, Gone with the Wind, made in 1939? Scarlett O’Hara, described as being 16 years old at the beginning of the movie, wore a party dress that showed much more cleavage than Alexus’. So did every other eligible girl at the party. And GWTW was no different in this regard from other movies of the time. When did we become more prudish than the Hays Commission?
Of course, Vivian was NOT 16. My guess is that Hollywood/Selznick’s vaunted realism didn’t extend to Southern modesty.
But to answer your question: when the schools got stupid, around, oh, 1970 or so.
This is one of those times when I wish we were allowed to post links. But if you google, “photos of 1939 high school prom,” and flip through the images, you will a lot of necklines that look more like Vivian Leigh’s than Alexus’.
You can post links! One will always get through!
Also that’s a derivation of Everybody Does It.
But I don’t think that’s the argument. In terms of modest norms and violations worth of punishment, the issue was whether a different standard was being applied to a plus-size black teen than was and has been applied to thinner white women. It would be Eeyore’s “Why me?” rationalization, except that there is no misconduct. That one is “Why should I be the one punished? Look at them!” This is “That’s not regarded as wrong for them, why is it wrong for me?” And in this case, it’s a fair question.
I think most arguments discussed on here focus on the lack of consistency, including Intermeddler’s #1, above.
However, Intermeddler’s #2, above, is Everybody Does It.
To clarify:
You can’t analogize 1939 prom dresses to this situation as part of a “consistency” argument. If the 1939 rules in those particular districts permitted those dresses while this situation in this district did not, then there is no consistency issue – different sets of agreed upon rules for different closed systems.
Only if rules are applied differently within a closed system can we argue inconsistency.
That’s why #2, and the subsequent desire to show how “we did it differently” in 1939 is an Everybody Does It rationalization…
That’s generally correct. I think it’s not valid here. We know that standards of modest dress institutional dress loosen in the US over time. They don’t get tighter. That’s why the time frame helps make the case.
Ah…Ok, now I’m figuring it out. IM pointed to Scarlett’s dress (when she was supposedly 16) to show that Alexus was being held to an unfair standard. I countered that a Hollywood costume in 1939 was hardly indicative of a reasonable standard for a real live teen then or now.
His link would apparently rebut the “then” part of that argument. Neither of us were arguing that the standard then was “right.”
Actually, Everybody Does It wasn’t my point #2 at all. Apparently, most people DON’T do it these days. My point was that I’m surprised by the number of people, including many commenters here, who are offended by dresses that would have seemed perfectly OK to most people in 1939. My own opinion is that 1939’s prom dresses were very pretty, but I think there would be nothing improper about a school banning them if its rules were written, objective and consistently applied
Regarding my point #1, I now see that I was wrong. I followed the links to the original story, and it turns out that the school did in fact have rather specific written guidelines for prom dresses. They also had a procedure (voluntary, I think, not mandatory) for submitting photographs of the dress to the school for pre-approval. Alexus, the girl here, submitted her dress and it was rejected. She then made some changes that she and her mother say they thought brought the dress into compliance. They also say that she resubmitted it but did not hear back from the school before the prom, even her mother called twice, so she went ahead and wore it to the prom.
It does seem quite true that the policy was applied arbitrarily and that Alexus was unfairly singled out for punishment. The newspaper published pictures of the prom before the controversy, and many of the girls were wearing gowns at least as revealing as Alexus’s.