The ACLU announced Tuesday that a New Jersey boy has been granted the right to wear skirts to school in protest of his high school’s "no-shorts" policy.  

This was in no small part thanks to intervention by the ACLU.  The 17-year-old had been sent home for wearing shorts on the first day of school in October.  The reason he was wearing shorts because one of his legs had been injured and in a brace during the summer.  One article points out that the student, Michael Coviello, "(has) been on the school’s mock trial team for four years," (hint: ‘future lawyer’), "…sings in the choir, plays the drums in the school band and is a member of the golf team."  As if those activities somehow prove the kid to be macho.  Actually, the article was trying to make the point that Coviello is not normally rebellious.  Yeah, right.

Anyway, the brouhaha apparently could have been avoided if the school had just used the "reasonable man" standard.  After all, the kid had a valid reason to want to wear shorts.  But when Hasbrouck Heights High School officials refused to grant the him an exception to the "no-shorts" rule, he reacted, well, like a future lawyer.

I was thinking Coviello’s got to be pretty smart because he got the ACLU to fight the battle instead of shelling out legal fees to some general-practice attorney who could have just as easily won the argument (after all, the school has no rule barring skirts).  Then I thought, wait a minute, how smart was it really to involve the ACLU?  In the end, the ACLU got what it considers a victory — a boy can wear a skirt — but the boy himself is still upset because wearing skirts isn’t what he really wanted.  He wanted to make a point and persuade the school to loosen up and let him wear shorts before April when the rule is annually suspended for the warmer months.

So score this one as a win for the ACLU, and a loss for its client.

This story got me to thinking about San Bernardino County’s newly proposed dress code (that’s "dress" as in "clothing").  The goal of the rules is to "present a professional appearance in order to promote a positive image to customers."  In addition to also prohibiting shorts, the proposed policy would ban face-piercing jewelry as well as most jeans and T-shirts, and would require that tattoos be covered up while on the job.  The proposed policy was discussed by the Board of Supervisors Tuesday, and a few county employees spoke in opposition.  You can read about it here and here.

People have strong feelings about this.  In fact, yesterday a county employee told me it’s unreasonable that the county wants her to cover up her tattoo…and I hadn’t even brought up the subject nor had I told her I work for the Board of Supervisors.

So you tell me, does the county’s proposed dress code seem reasonable?  You can get a copy by clicking the "Attachment" link below.  You might want to take this opportunity to try out FlashReport‘s new "Comment" feature (below).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 25th, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.