Historically Black University Enforces Strict Dress Code Amid Backlash

Pajama bottoms; crop tops; leggings as pants; du-rags; gangsta-style, sagging trousers; hoodies; and underwear showing. Modern times have become synonymous with declining standards, and all the preceding are seen in today’s schools. Not, however, at Tuskegee University (TU) in Alabama — and not under President Mark Brown’s watch.

Historically black TU has made news for renewing emphasis on a student dress code. Some are calling it strict. Others would just call it common sense. If you would call President Brown out for his standards, however, don’t bother. For he’s already sent a definitive message to critics: I won’t back down.

It’s not just tradition that informs why he shouldn’t, either. In fact, a body of research into “enclothed cognition” finds that attire really does influence thinking.

TU has also, do note, banned what divides thinking: cellphone use in class.

Dr. Brown, a retired Air Force major general, related the new code in a recent “Message to Students,” writing:

The Student Handbook requires students to arrive on campus with a business suit and proper shoes for a business meeting. Students are prohibited from wearing revealing clothing in class, to the cafeteria or in official settings like Convocation. They are also not able to wear bedroom shoes, bonnets, or du-rags to class or the cafeteria.

Faculty will be empowered to respond to students who are inappropriately dressed based on these guidelines. Faculty will also be able to respond to a different classroom challenge — cell phones. Unless directed by the professor, students are no longer allowed to use their cell phones while in class.

Brown also mentioned that students “are required to go to class.” Perhaps mindful of the saying, “Eighty percent of success is just showing up,” the academic called the requirement “the heart of all academic success.” He added, too, that “we track attendance.”

And there’s more to it still. As Fox News related Sunday, Brown further stated that the dress code should just

be viewed as one part of a much broader push toward student success that includes punctuality … internships, professional certifications, interview preparation and workplace readiness.

The punctuality point is significant, especially at a historically black institution. Why? Because as black writer T.J. Holmes lamented in 2014, tardiness characterizes the black community. The phenomenon even has a name: CPT — “colored people’s time.”

In fact, to an extent Holmes vindicated Brown’s emphasis. “This hurts to admit,” Holmes wrote,

but I often pause when considering doing business with black people or black companies, based on my experiences.

Translation: 90 percent of success is showing up on time. Ergo, habituating students to tardiness handicaps them — perhaps for life.

Just Common Sense

Returning to dress, Brown’s standards were the standard just a few generations ago, and they’re simple common sense. For example, The Montgomery Advertiser informs, providing more details:

Clothing displaying profanity, discriminatory language, sexually explicit content or messages promoting violence, illegal drugs, alcohol or tobacco is also prohibited.

Predictably, however, these traditional standards don’t sit well with the cultural devolutionaries. As Fox News also reports:

The university’s policy has drawn criticism from freedom of expression advocates … with some critics framing the rules as “respectability politics.”

The “freedom of expression” argument is a nonstarter, however, and detached from reason. (And this isn’t just because it’s freedom of speech, not “expression,” that the Constitution guarantees.) After all, would you allow students to attend school naked or in a thong bathing suit? If not, you’re also limiting “expression”; you’re also drawing lines. It’s just a question of where they’ll be drawn.

That is, too, what an honest discussion of this matter involves. Someone resorting to the “expression” criticism is an unserious observer; he’s likely seeking only advantage, not Truth.

As for Brown, he’s unbowed by the critics. As he told Fox News Digital in an interview:

“The focus is how do I make you a professional in whatever space you want to go in?” he said.

“Any higher education institution in the country that’s not focused on student success, no matter what type of university that is, is not focused where they should be. … That’s exactly why we exist.”

Brown added that he wanted his students to graduate with more than just a grade-point average. What good is having a 4.0 GPA that gets you a job if your habits — dress, tardiness, etc. — won’t enable you to keep that job? That’s essentially his point.

“The Clothes Make the Man” — and More

Far more, though, could still be said. For example, consider another point Brown made while defending his policy on Fox:

It’s not the world we wish you were going into; it’s the world you’re going to go into. … It’s not the way that we wish an employer would perceive you. It’s the way the employer will perceive you.

This is true. Yet it also makes it sound as if the given societal expectations are unfair and wouldn’t exist if justice reigned. (And in fairness, Brown was perhaps just being diplomatic.) There is, however, good reason for dress codes.

Instilling students with this truth would, too, have a positive effect. Instead of considering the codes an unfair burden, they’d realize they were participating in an objective good. They then might not just grudgingly adhere to the rules, but actually feel good about upholding them. For the standard would then be not only in their workplaces, but in their hearts.

How, though, could a dress code be more than a superficiality? How could it be an objective good? Science itself may provide the answer.

The Science of Sartorial Splendor

Just consider the aforementioned “enclothed cognition” phenomenon. This, wrote the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) in 2023, refers

to the systematic influence that clothes can have on the wearer’s feelings, thoughts, and behaviors through their symbolic meaning.

And, in fact, studies do show, states SPSP, that “what we wear influences how we think, feel, and act.” For example, the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology reported in 2012 on how research subjects’ attention to performance-related tasks improved when wearing a doctor’s coat. “Attention did not increase,” they added, “when the coat was not worn or associated with a painter.”

Of course, many are skeptical of research — and often for good reason. Yet aren’t the above findings mere common sense? Just imagine, for instance, that everyone wore bathing suits to a certain function. Would that not engender a different attitude than if all attendees wore three-piece suits? As is said, to play the part it helps to look the part.

None of this is to say dress codes alone will remedy the United States’ manifold academic woes. But ensuring that America’s students look more like intellectuals than indigents surely is a good start.