Spaghetti-strap ban a wet noodle of a policy

When I graduated from high school some years ago my parents gave me a gift for the last day of classes. It was a small, instant camera that produced photos on mini stickers.

In my senior memory book, I created a two-page collage of the last day of school using those stickers. One of them features three dear friends wearing sundresses and tank tops with spaghetti straps. I captioned the photo, “Showing off those sexy shoulders.”

Anyone looking at the book might glance past it, thinking it was teenagers being silly, striking a model pose, but the photo captures the last act of protest my classmates put together.

Like most public schools, ours had a dress code. Like most dress codes, parts of it were sexist and rested on stereotypes that only girls wear certain types of clothing and boys wear other types. Under the code, spaghetti straps were banned.

Schools have a right to establish parameters around dress to help facilitate a safe and comfortable learning environment for all. The problems arise when young women, or other groups of students, face the brunt of enforcement of these policies, missing instructional time and facing disciplinary action as their bodies are judged as “distractions.”

That type of dress code enforcement is a violation of federal law which requires dress codes to be gender neutral and enforced equally. A recent incident at Hopkinsville High School made headlines when a student’s peaceful protest of her school’s “no exposed shoulders” dress code ended in a confrontation with a school resource officer — which, in turn, landed the student in a juvenile detention center facing serious charges, including disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and third-degree assault.

The incident illustrates how quickly things can spiral out of control and is a reminder to students, parents, teachers and school-based law enforcement of the Supreme Court ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines, which found that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

Public school officials cannot try to silence students who express opinions about the school dress code or other issues in non-disruptive ways. As often as possible, teachers and counselors should handle disciplinary matters, and only engage law enforcement to handle criminal activity.

Remember that phrase, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”? Handling behavior issues with handcuffs, tasers and arrests puts too many kids into the school-to-prison pipeline. The sanctions my friends and I faced for violating the prohibition on spaghetti straps didn’t include a trip to the juvenile detention center. If we violated the policy we could borrow a jacket from lost and found or receive a written warning. Subsequent violations could result in in-school suspension and possible expulsion.

I can’t remember who had the idea, but most of the women in my class banded together and decided on the last day of school to wear spaghetti straps in violation of the policy. An assistant principal caught wind of the plan and threatened that anyone wearing spaghetti straps would not be allowed to walk across the stage for graduation.

That strengthened our resolve; if we all participated, there was no way they were going to pull every female student out of the lineup.

A huge group of us wore our spaghetti straps and we walked across the stage to graduate the next day. Young people, including transgender and gender-nonconforming students in Kentucky and across the nation, continue to protest unconstitutional dress code policies and unequal enforcement. They inspire me. I hope that, because of their efforts, my first-grader won’t have to stand on my spaghetti-strapped shoulders to organize a protest of her own.