Strict Dress Codes Back in Fashion on O.C. Campuses

No exposing your undies. No James Dean look-alikes. And heaven forbid, don’t show your midriff.

That’s what a number of Orange County schools are telling teenagers this year after several districts toughened dress policies to ban gang garb and enforce “proper” attire.

Dress codes developed into a major issue in the 1980s, when gang clothing became a way for members to identify themselves on campus. Now, school officials say, they are also fed up with low-riding pants, sheer apparel and what Irvine school administrator Ken Bailey calls “provocative and revealing display.”

Whether gang-related or not, scanty or baggy dress is inappropriate, disrupts the learning environment and should be prohibited, administrators said.

“I don’t want to see your underwear,” said Kay Rager, principal of Dana Hills High in Dana Point. “Ten years ago, there was a lot of talk about dress codes for safety reasons. Now it’s also a decency issue.”

Capistrano Unified, which includes Dana Hills, is among school districts stepping up enforcement of dress codes when tiny tank tops and see-through blouses are in vogue for young women. Some pupils have been sent home for wearing stylish spaghetti-strap tops that show their bras. Also banned are extremely baggy pants, Doc Marten boots, short shorts, steeled-toe shoes and even overalls.

In Irvine Unified, administrators said they no longer tolerate clothes that are too big, too tight, too high-cut, too low-cut, or anything that fits poorly or bares too much flesh. The district has distributed a list, complete with pictures, of what is not allowed.

“It’s inappropriate for kids to come to school with their pants barely staying up and their underwear showing,” said Margie Wakeham, an Irvine Unified board member. “In our district, we have less of a gang problem, so our policy weighs more on the decency issue.

“There’s a growing concern about sloppiness and disruptive behavior. When students carry a sloppy look, their behavior becomes sloppy.”

Liz Schroeder, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said schools are within legal boundaries when they regulate student dress as a way to protect students’ safety.

“The school administrators’ job is to ensure a quality education and to ensure kids are safe when they are coming to and from school,” she said. “Their job is not to dictate the fashion trends of teens.”

A 1995 law states that “ ‘gang-related’ apparel is hazardous to the health and safety of the school environment.” State policy allows schools to prohibit certain attire resembling or linked to gang activity.

“But some of the new restrictions that go beyond that and impose on students a standard of dress which administrators feel is appropriate does not necessarily [involve] school safety,” Schroeder said. “In those cases, there may be 1st Amendment implications.”

Schroeder said she is not aware of any current litigation involving the banning of a certain clothing brand or type of garment. However, there have been a number of free speech and censorship cases that cover clothing with imprinted slogans.

The most famous is a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Tinker vs. Des Moines, in which a brother and sister were suspended for wearing black armbands at high school to protest the Vietnam War. The justices backed the students, declaring that students do not forfeit “their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

In areas where gangs are more prevalent, police said they must actively enforce dress codes to ensure campus safety. Police routinely alert families and schools to changing fashion trends among gangs. Though popularized by the fashion industry, the baggy apparel associated with gangs can threaten student safety, said Mike Aquino, gang investigator for the Anaheim Police Department.

“Unfortunately, we’ve had kids who were not gang members get killed in drive-by shootings because they were wearing gang attire,” Aquino said. “Kids dressed like gang members are putting themselves at risk.”

On the advice of police, Anaheim middle and high schools this year also have banned the 1950s rebel look, characterized, for boys, by tight white T-shirts with rolled-up sleeves, fitted jeans, black boots and Harley-Davidson belt buckles. Police say many teens who adopt that look are gang members who have been caught with weapons and involved in fights or crimes.

“We’ve established them as bona fide gangs,” Aquino said.

Youngsters who wear the rebel look maintain that they are nonviolent. While the look is reminiscent of James Dean in “Rebel Without a Cause,” they say they are rebels with a cause: to go to house parties and dances, and meet girls. They call themselves party crews, not gangs.

Julio Cortez, 14, was suspended for five days from Anaheim High earlier this year for wearing rebel-style clothing after two warnings from administrators that the look is not permitted.

Cortez said he hangs with a party crew because it gives him a sense of belonging. Though two teens from his crew were killed in a car chase last year and rival rebels were suspected, Cortez insists that “we’re not violent. . . . It was the other crew that started trouble.” After Cortez served his suspension, he and his mother, Marta Cardenas, met with school officials to review the school dress code. Cardenas learned then that administrators consider her son’s dress to be gang attire.

“The news scared me,” Cardenas said. “But I know my son is not part of a gang. I don’t mind this rebel look because it isn’t like the baggy clothes that gang members wear.”

Some parents and students say that overzealous school administrators have gone too far with dress codes.

Dana Hills High sophomore Tessa Bollmann said Capistrano Unified’s tougher dress regulations are a way for the district to impose puritanical values on students.

Bollmann was called into the vice principal’s office at the beginning of the school year for wearing lime-green combat boots. The school prohibits steel-toed shoes that have eight or more eyelets. The reason for the rule, officials said, is that white supremacist groups have adopted that style.

“I can honestly say I am not with a gang or related to any of them at all,” said Bollmann, who has been told she can never wear her boots on campus again. “My boots aren’t even steel-toed, and they have six eyelets and the rest are buckles.

“The administrators are totally stereotyping every student with these restrictions,” she said. “I dress this way because I like bright colors. It expresses my creativity and shows that I am unique--not a white supremacist.”

Eva Bollmann, Tessa Bollmann’s mother, said the school does not have the right to tell her children what to wear. She said she has established family dress rules, and the children abide by them.

“The policy takes freedom away from the kids,” she said. “My daughter likes to express herself in a colorful way.”