Tuskegee University Dress Code Sparks Debate

Sara Weissman, Inside Higher Ed

The historically Black university is barring students from wearing bonnets or du-rags in classes or the campus dining hall. The move has polarized opinions on and off campus.

Tuskegee University recently ignited an online firestorm after the historically Black university in Alabama announced new dress code guidelines for students, banning bonnets, du-rags, and slippers in classrooms and the cafeteria.

Tuskegee leaders, and other advocates of the policy, say the new dress code prepares students for the professional world post-college. Critics argue the standards are overly restrictive and target clothing associated with Black hairstyles and culture. Some Black scholars say the news is going viral because it hit a raw nerve—an ongoing conversation about respectability politics within Black communities, particularly at HBCUs, and a growing generational divide on the topic.

The clash over clothing at Tuskegee reflects an “eons-old” debate “around Black people’s personal comportment, behavior—this idea that how one carried themselves … the class expressions they had, were going to convey to a white dominant mainstream that we deserved citizenship” and other rights, said Saida Grundy, associate professor of sociology, African American and Black diaspora studies at Boston University and an alum of Spelman College.

As a part of Tuskegee’s new policy, students are also expected to show up on campus with “a business suit and proper shoes for a business meeting” and avoid “revealing clothing” in classes, the dining hall and official university settings such as Convocation, according to a message from the university’s president, Mark Brown

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“The goal here is not meant to restrict you from enjoying the Tuskegee Experience, but to prepare you with a solid foundation for the workforce you will enter once you leave Tuskegee,” Brown wrote. 

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