Jonathan Wright | Defining dressing for success

If you’re like me and attended private school before coming to Philly, you probably were told how much facial hair was appropriate, how much jewelry you could wear or what type of clothing was acceptable for school. Thankfully, college life at Penn has afforded me the opportunity to grow a pretty incredible goatee and assemble a closet reflective of my personal style. For young men, wearing inappropriate T-shirts and getting the urge to grow that Abe Lincoln beard out of your system is part of what college is about, after all.

That is, unless you attend Morehouse College in Atlanta. The historically-black institution and alma mater of Martin Luther King, Jr. has implemented an “Appropriate Attire Policy” that prohibits members of its all-male student body from wearing clothing featuring lewd messages or pictures, baseball caps inside school venues or class, and jeans during major school programs, among other regulations. Although many other schools have dress codes, Morehouse’s policy is distinctive because it’s solely based on what’s not acceptable, not what is approved clothing.

While administrations at private institutions unquestionably have the authority to set guidelines for students that coincide with the vision or image of their schools, a dress code for college students — and a restriction-based one at that — seems more like parenting than preparation for the real world.

Critics of dress codes point out that they focus on superficial matters and don’t necessarily impact learning — something even truer at colleges, where students don’t stay with the same cohort all day. And while we need to understand workplace attire before graduation, Intro to Sociology is hardly the place for that lesson.

But Morehouse isn’t citing these traditional motives. In an article detailing the school’s new policy in The Maroon Tiger, the school newspaper, there is no mention of professionalism, preparing students for corporate America or improving academic performance. The article does, however, mention the “College’s outstanding legacy of producing leaders” and the school’s expectation that students dress “neatly and appropriately at all times.”

The impressive list of alumni and accomplishments the school has achieved over the years speaks for itself. And I don’t know much about being a Morehouse Man, but I find it difficult to imagine that a student could tarnish the school’s legacy by wearing a Yankees cap during lunch. Sure, I’ve heard that King and his classmates wore suits during their years there, but times have changed. It’s unfair to connect the legacy that King — along with those who preceded and followed him — left at Morehouse with what the students of this era deem trendy or stylish.

But any gripe that I have with the policy is negligible, if Morehouse students agree with Cameron Thomas-Shah, co-chairman of the Student Government Association. Thomas-Shah supports the move and echoed the administration’s stance on the school’s legacy.

“Morehouse College has a very strong image to uphold,” he wrote in an e-mail, adding that the students are charged with “maintaining an appropriate image of the college for the sake of sustainability and growth.” I don’t disagree with him about the students’ responsibility to maintain a school’s image, but the most genuine portrayal of a school’s image is what its students achieve in and out of the classroom — not what they’re wearing while doing it.

Granted, as a collective student body we may face different issues or represent different values than Morehouse. But besides a few questionable (ok, downright tacky) ensembles thrown together by our classmates occasionally, most of us here would agree that a University dress code that seeks to uphold Penn’s image and legacy would be unnecessary — not because the name ‘Penn’ speaks for itself. But we’ve been afforded the opportunity to see that professional development and educational achievement don’t have to constrain personal expression in any way. We’ve got the rest of our lives to uphold the Penn legacy. We’ve only got four years to wear immature t-shirts.

Jonathan Wright is a College senior from Memphis, Tenn. His e-mail address is wright@dailypennsylvanian.com.

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