Dress code at Edina High School raises questions at HHS

When rumor broke out on Wednesday, Sep. 13, at Edina High School that there would be increased enforcement of the school dress code, protests among the student body broke out. Despite the falsity of this rumor, the issue has sparked controversy from students in and out of the district.

“The original protest was just people dressing in more revealing clothing. In the middle of the day, people met in the commons to take pictures and it turned into a protest with some chanting” said Jenna Simon, senior, Edina High School student.

The protest started after two girls were told that their outfits did not fit into dress code policy. Edina, among other schools in the conference, refers to not wearing sexually explicit clothing in their dress code policies. This raises the question of whether or not the dress codes are sexist toward females.

“Enforcing the Hopkins dress code more would cause major issues and make students unhappy, since the dress code is bias toward girls,” said Libby Fern, senior.

Students indicated their desire to express themselves through their clothing without restrictions. In an uproar, many students chose to purposefully break the dress code in order to make a statement that it was unfair for the administration to call out sexualiztion.

After the student-led protests ensued, they were told by administration that they were simply misinformed. The dress code had always been in place and enforced, it had just always been a private matter.  

“I have rarely heard of anyone being dress coded, so in the case that a student is dress coded, they’re outfit must be pretty bad,” Fern said.

The Hopkins dress code policy includes too much skin or undergarments showing, along with explicit or vulgar language written on clothing. This is one way in which HHS tries to accommodate a dress code that is not just aimed at females, even if they are dress coded more frequently than their counterpart.