ALAMEDA — Kristen Wong felt the flutter of butterflies in her stomach as she walked into the administrative office at Lincoln Middle School two years ago. She thought her pink scooped-necked tank top, cardigan and jeans were more than appropriate, given that the shirt hit just below her collarbone and the rest of her body was covered. But she knew shirts like hers were against the school’s dress code, and walking into the hub of school administrators meant entering a danger zone.
“Watch me get dress coded,” she told her friends.
Sure enough, Wong — then a 12-year-old sixth grader at Lincoln Middle School — was forced to call her parents and wait for them to bring her something else to wear. That embarrassing event led Wong, now 14 and a freshman at Alameda High School, to take on what she considered the district’s arcane and sexist dress code. After two years and help from three friends and a sympathetic teacher — plus staff meetings, proposals and overt backlash — they won.
The Alameda Unified School District decided in a June 26 meeting to lift several dress code restrictions for the school year beginning Aug. 20, allowing students to wear hats indoors, shorts of any length, spaghetti-strapped tank tops and ripped jeans — all prohibited before, according to documents reviewed by the Bay Area News Group.
“It’s so empowering to be part of something bigger than yourself,” Wong said.
Under the new guidelines, the only restrictions for students are clothing displaying violence, pornographic images or illegal activity, “images or language that creates a hostile or intimidating environment,” visible underwear, bathing suits and certain headgear.
“I see this as part in parcel of these other changes that are happening in our culture right now around the #MeToo movement and concerns about rape culture,” said Susan Davis, spokeswoman for the district. “As a school district, we really don’t want to normalize any languages or practices that make it seem like girls’ bodies are inherently sexualized or that boys have a right to treat girls a certain way depending on what they’re wearing or how much they’re covering.”
The students rejoiced when the decision was announced, but the fight for change was an uphill battle between teenagers and adult authority figures.
“We gave an address to the faculty and there was quite a lot of push back,” said Leo Long, a 13-year-old who advocated for the dress-code change. “You had people saying kids don’t know what they’re doing, this is an adult job.”
Both Long and Wong said they were inspired by waves of activism conducted by students around the county — most notably the “#NeverAgain” movement for gun control led by survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.
“As a 14-year-old, it really is hard to become part of these policy changes because so many people have said ‘you’re not qualified’,” Wong said. “We fight back because this is affecting us.”
While the former policies touched all students, the student-led group and district officials agreed that it disproportionately targeted female students.
When the group started, their teacher, Rebecca Baumgartner, went through the Old Navy website and checked every article of clothing against the school’s dress code. She found that more than half of girl’s clothing was not dress-code compliant, while less than half of boy’s clothing was.
“It was really mind-blowing to see what (few) options girls have,” Long said.