BOSTON LATIN SCHOOL REVERSES DRESS CODE POLICY

Clearly someone isn’t assigning enough homework these days at Boston Latin School. How else to explain the latest kerfuffle over.... the dress code!

A BLS junior, Liliana Severin, a member of the Students Advocating for Gender Equality club, has started a petition (now with 500 signers) insisting the code which prohibits “visible underwear or spaghetti strap garments” is “unacceptable” because “it enforces the sexualization of a young girl’s body.”

The dress code also prohibits girls from wearing leggings unless they are under shorts or skirts and bars anyone from wearing gang-related colors or attire.

Well, memo to Ms. Severin: Welcome to the real world. It’s a world where no one really wants to see your underwear — certainly not the college recruiter, not the future employer, and not the teacher standing at the front of the classroom.

Now Ms. Severin insists the code “reinforces a patriarchal society where men can decide whether a female’s clothing is appropriate.” And we pity poor Headmaster Michael Contompasis, who returned to the job on an interim basis. Not sure what argument Severin would make against the recently departed female headmaster.

As for sexist? Well, the code, we assume, also prohibits guys from wearing their jeans so low as to expose wide swaths of those plaid boxers.

Education needs to be about more than memorizing the Pythagorean theorem. It needs to be about preparing students to deal with basic rules of decorum and good taste. The Latin School dress code does nothing more than that.