’Aggressive and degrading.’ Did this high school’s dress code crackdown ‘shame’ girls?

Hermiston High School students were teeming with excitement and anticipation their first day back last week.

But as hundreds of students entered the front entrance to the building, about 62 were pulled aside and forced to wear T-shirts for breaking the school’s dress code — bare midriffs, revealing necklines and tight tops.

The Eastern Oregon school with about 1,600 students is taking a harder stance on its dress code policy this year. But some are saying administrators came “planned and ready to shame” teens on Aug. 29 and that the district should soften its policy.

School officials say it expects students, staff and visitors to “dress appropriately for the standard workplace environment.”

“Responsibility for personal dress and grooming rests primarily with students and their parents. HHS believes that schools are workplaces and must be treated as such,” district officials said in an Aug. 17 Facebook post.

But Hermiston seniors Adriana Gutierrez and Piper Snyder started a Change.org petition, calling the approach “aggressive and degrading.”

They argue it discriminates against students with larger chests or who were showing their midriff.

“The staff of Hermiston High School were lined up inside the main entrance ready to ‘dress code’ and shame students before offering a proper greeting to welcome the students,” Gutierrez wrote. “Staff had many T-shirts on hand that were planned and ready to give out, planned and ready to shame.”

“Students understand the rules were put in place to protect them, but who are they being protected from?” says the petition. “Why are they being protected? Why is there anyone, especially adult staff, in the building that they should be protected from?”

Their petition gained more than 2,200 signatures in its first five days.

Under Hermiston’s current dress code that’s been place for several years, students are not allowed to show cleavage or midriffs. Violators may be either asked to change, sent to Students Services or told to go home.

Some of the violations include:

• Hats and hoodies cannot be worn in the school.

• Underwear cannot be exposed.

• Any clothing or jewelry that is “obscene” or which promotes substance use, gang affiliation or “inappropriate products or activities” is not allowed.

Hermiston School Board policy, last updated in 2017, says that students will be sent home until a conference can be arranged with their parents or guardians if dressing or grooming “disrupts or directly interferes with the learning process of the individual student, other students or the learning climate of the school.”

Hermiston High School Principal Tom Spoo said staff complaints were what pushed the administration to crack down on dressing standards this year. Students have struggled to follow the school’s dress code the last couple years.

Some students will be dissatisfied, Spoo said, but it’s all in service to “better the culture of our building.”

“It was time to reestablish our norms,” he said in a provided statement. “We are simply making a self correction to our dress code to accommodate for the current styles. We are still working to maintain a professional atmosphere here at the school and, as such, we have had to address areas where we have moved away from professionalism.”

Still, some students are hoping to come to a “middle ground” that’s less strict and stringent for students.

They’re proposing students be allowed to show a midriff up to 2 inches and show up to 3 inches below their collarbone.

“This is a reasonable proposal as clothes should be allowed to be a form of expression and a way for students to feel confident and comfortable,” Gutierrez wrote. “The chest of students is not their fault. The 3 inch proposal is only an inch longer than the average T-shirt will sit.”