A rule that falls on one group is not a rule about clothing

The argument

Proponents of this position argue that the test of a dress code is not what it says but whom it falls on, and that strict codes fail that test. Rules about the length of a skirt, the width of a strap, the visibility of a midriff or the fit of a garment apply, in practice, almost entirely to girls and to students whose bodies draw comment, while the rules that genuinely apply to everyone, such as prohibitions on offensive slogans, are rarely the ones that generate conflict. On this account a code that produces an overwhelmingly one sided pattern of enforcement is not a neutral rule about clothing but a rule about particular students, whatever its wording. The position then presses the justification usually offered, which is that certain clothing distracts others. Proponents argue that this reasoning assigns the problem to the wrong party. If some students cannot concentrate because of what a classmate is wearing, the conduct that needs addressing belongs to the people failing to concentrate and to the staff responsible for teaching them otherwise, not to the classmate. A school that responds by regulating the classmate has told her that her presence is a problem to be managed, and proponents hold that this lesson does more lasting harm than any garment. The position is careful about its own scope. It does not claim that schools can require nothing at all: prohibitions on offensive images, and on clothing that is unsafe in a laboratory or a workshop, are accepted as rules with reasons that single nobody out. What it rejects is the dense body of detailed restrictions on fit and coverage, on the ground that those rules have no justification which survives being applied consistently, and that their practical effect is to make some students responsible for how they are looked at.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Those who disagree argue that an uneven pattern of enforcement is a reason to write and apply a code better, not to abandon it, and that the same reasoning would retire any rule that happens to be broken more often by one group. They also contest the distraction point, holding that a school is entitled to set conditions for a shared working environment without that amounting to a judgement about any student, much as other institutions do. A further reply is that removing a code does not remove scrutiny of how students dress; it transfers that scrutiny from a stated rule to the unstated judgement of peers, which is harsher and cannot be appealed.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Critics hold that the pattern described varies widely between schools and depends on how a code is written and applied rather than on codes as such. [Rejecting P2] Uneven enforcement is an argument for enforcing a rule properly, since on this reasoning any rule broken more often by one group would have to be withdrawn. [Rejecting P3] A school may set conditions for a shared working environment without thereby assigning blame to any student. [Rejecting C] Removing a stated code transfers scrutiny to the unstated judgement of peers, which is harsher and cannot be appealed.