Southern University board chairman wants dress code for its campuses

The leader of Southern University’s Board of Supervisors said he wants the system to follow the lead of other historically Black colleges and universities and adopt a dress code. 

Board chairman Tony Clayton, who’s also the district attorney for Iberville, West Baton Rouge and Pointe Coupee parishes, said he wants to pull together the chancellors from Southern’s five campuses to discuss the idea ahead of their next meeting on Sept. 18.  

“I walked around campus the other day. I think we need it,” Clayton told board members at Friday’s meeting in Baton Rouge. 

The HBCUs Clayton referred to include Tuskegee University, a private school in Alabama where the new dress code has been met with criticism from some students. It prohibits students from wearing revealing clothes, as well as “bedroom shoes, bonnets, or (do rags)” to their classes or the campus cafeteria, according to a letter its president released over the summer.

Tuskegee students on campus for their first day of class Wednesday had mixed opinions about the new dress code, the Alabama Reflector reported.

Serenity Mitchell, a junior at Tuskegee majoring in biology, said the public manner of sharing the dress code painted students in a bad light.

“I think that releasing it in the way that they did made it look like students were kind of walking around here looking any type of way, and that’s just not true,” Mitchell said. “We as a student population represent ourselves well, so I think publishing the dress code like they did just makes us look bad.”

Tuskegee University declined to comment on its new dress code policy, which does not include any specifics on enforcement or penalties.

Student attire policies vary at other HBCUs. Hampton University and Fisk University have dress codes, while Howard University and Morehouse College have rules that do not apply campuswide.

Andrea Tinker with the Alabama Reflector contributed to this report.