HEY, I WROTE THAT!

Whitley called on schools to take the first step, encouraging members of society to “open up [their] eyes and see how [they] can be culturally expansive and create inclusion for all.”

 

According to CNN, a group of Black students at Coosa High School in Rome, Georgia sued their school district for “continued racial discrimination at the school and continued violations of their First Amendment and equal protection rights” due to “repeated incidents of racial intimidation and bigotry.”

 

At Coosa, students are allowed to wear any kind of apparel with the Confederate flag on it, but are not allowed to wear any kind of Black Lives Matter apparel. From an “alleged re-enactment of George Floyd’s death” to “addressing Black students as ‘slaves’,” some of the students said they feel as if they are being blatantly discriminated against.

 

47 middle and high school students from Alabama took part in a poll for this article that analyzed their perspective on dress code based on experience and personal beliefs. Forty five of them said they did not think it was acceptable for a student wearing Black Lives Matter apparel to be dress coded while a student wearing a shirt with a Confederate flag was not, while only two said they believed it was acceptable.

 

Like Whitley, 13-year-old Sophia Trevino was among 16 girls dress-coded on her first day of eighth grade at Simpson Middle School in Georgia. When told to put her hands by her side, the holes in Trevino’s pants were above her finger tips, leading her to receive a dress code violation. Trevino said this was nothing new to her school.

 

The New York Times reported that two years prior, administrators made complaints and gave recommendations about how parents were dressed to pick up their children from school.

 

Julia Squitteri, the 18-year-old founder and executive director of The Ruth Project, created dress code reform initiatives to change their enforcement and policies. Squitteri said she has used student testimonies, a petition with about 4,000 signatures on it and legal arguments written by The Ruth Project to enact this reform.

 

The organization also emphasizes recognizing discrepancies in enforcement and using Title IX to put pressure on high level officials. Squitteri added that the efforts provided to change enforcement and policies help present legitimate legal concerns that school districts cannot turn away from.

 

In addition to Trevino’s involvement in denouncing the dress code with her weekly T-shirts that display messages confronting the school board and its policies, both she and Squitteri are using gender discrimination as a call to action to push for more equal and gender neutral enforcement of policies.

 

Whitley hopes other students do not have to endure the same experience and gender discrimination she did. However she said there is a long way to go to fully welcome and acquire the new style women are bringing to the table, as policies are updated to reflect modern times and fashion – and that it will take more than a tweet to invoke solutions.