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Stuyvesant To Female Students: Stop Dressing Like Sluts
By
Jen Chung
Published May 25, 2012
Modified May 25, 2012
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By
Jen Chung
Published May 25, 2012
Modified May 25, 2012
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Stuyvesant High School is one of the city's top public high schools. Which is apparently why Principal Stanley Teitel wants female students to start dressing like nuns. A new dress code for the school states, "Students should wear the appropriate attire to school" and guidelines include "Shoulders, undergarments, midriffs and lower backs should not be exposed" and "The length of shorts, dresses and skirts should extend below the fingertips with the arms straight at your side." But even students wearing skirts below the fingertips are being harassed by school security and administration!
In the Stuyvesant student newspaper, The Spectator (h/t School Book), female students shared their accounts of trying to deal with the fascist fashion rules. One student said, "All I wore was a long-sleeved button down, which was secured by a navy skirt and accompanied by floral cutout tights; I didn’t intend for it to be inappropriate in the slightest. At the moment, I was confused because I specifically made sure that the skirt covering my patterned tights was past my fingertips. She told me that the whole outfit was bad and that I looked like I was“going out for a Saturday night, not going to school.” I think we all know what she was implying. After she took my ID and barred me from going to class until I changed..." Another recounted:
...I walked in wearing a dress that did in fact follow the rules, only to be stopped by one of the women sitting by the scanners. She told me that my dress was too short, and that I would have plenty of time to “show off my curves” when I wasn’t in school (I found this to be ridiculous because the dress I was wearing was shapeless). She then went on to say that the dress code was only instituted for my protection, because there are a lot of bad men outside school, and if I was raped nobody would be able to take that away from me. Then, she said, “and you want a husband, don’t you?”
A third student complained, "Boys barely have to acknowledge the existence of a dress code at all."
We spoke to Principal Teitel this afternoon, who said that he "certainly" never told any administrators to tell students they might be sexually assaulted or imply the students were dressing for "Saturday night." The dress code came about because he felt "children were dressing inappropriately" and wanted it to stop. Teitel also disagreed that the rules were biased against girls. Sadly, we forgot to ask Teitel if the "Cuddle Puddle" still exists.
Tagged
dress code
fashion
fingertips
high school
stan teitel
stuyvesant
stuyvesant high school
Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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