De Anza College will be closely watching Foothill College next week when it votes on that issue of issues, the dress code.

The dress code originated a decade ago with the students themselves, and was not, as some believe, an order handed down from some lofty administration machinery. Eventually, its enforcement was taken over by the administration and it became District policy. There it had remained since — defended, ignored, ridiculed, and tolerated.

Because it is District policy, any changes the Board of Trustees may make on the code affect both campuses equally. Despite the numerous questionnaires, polls, and petitions of past semesters, there is no better way to find out the desires of a college student body than to simply have it vote on an issue.

If a significant majority of students indicate its desire to return the right of creating and enforcing any dress code to student government, then we do not see how the Board in good faith can refuse such a request.

If it does, the “lines of communication” that we hear so much about aren’t really open after all. It’s a sad commentary on any student body when only the controversy of a dress code can fire up students.

There is another referendum on Foothill’s ballot, that concerning Vietnam. But Vietnam is 8,000 miles away, and the student who desperately wants to do something about it feels a terrible powerlessness. The dress code, however, is a matter that many students feel belongs to them.

Archived from Volume 1, Issue 2.