Dress code enforced at Iowa high school

'Things are better, things are worse'

AMES, Iowa (RWN) - At least no one is getting made fun of for what they're wearing anymore.

That's how it's supposed to be, anyway. But at James Dougan High School in this university town, the recently enforced dress code - women's faces fully covered, boys in robes - has become an object of controversy.

School officials instituted the dress code for fairness six months ago. Ames is an economically diverse city, and Dougan is a high school that draws from very rich and very poor areas.

"We had a situation in which some students were coming in very well dressed, dressed to the nines, dressed to impress, and other students were coming in wearing whatever they could scrape together," said Sam Perkins, the school's principal. "School shouldn't be about what you wear. We need to breed equality here."

School officials scraped together money from the school's athletic budget for students who couldn't afford uniforms and announced the program.

"It worked out fine at first, other than some parents being ticked off about individuality," said Tara Poturalski, the school's registrar. "Then the rich kids got together to mount a revolution."

The "revolution" aimed at personalizing the uniforms and personal appearance. To accommodate poorer students, the guidelines were left vague. A junior named Rich Howard found the loopholes and began to exploit them.

"Rich girls started wearing colored chadors," Perkins said. "Rich boys started wearing robes of really fine material, of silk and linen. Everyone else was wearing plain cotton."

Then came the boots.

"Oh yeah," Howard said. "That was my masterstroke. The rules specified robes and chadors, but they didn't specify hem length. I knew we couldn't get away with real short ones, but if you wore boots, the hem of the robe would be significantly shorter than your shoe."

Boot sales exploded in Ames with Midwestern kids in snakeskin boots, in ostrich boots, in forestry boots that had been painted in a rainbow of colors. Howard was expelled for that idea, but the boots caught on - though local religious leaders are talking about enforcing a stronger dress code next year.

"I guess if there's one good thing about the boots, it's that even the poorer kids could join in," Perkins said.

The only problem at the school, though, is that the rich kids have the nicer boots and clothing, and it's obvious how much nicer.

"So we're pretty much back to where we started from," he said. "Kids. They're our future, right?"


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