The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Old enough not to wear what one wants

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Apr 28, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Old enough not to wear what one wants

Nehal Shah

Some parents have no qualms with the dress code

VIOLATION OF DRESS CODE? A file picture of students of one of the prominent colleges in Bangalore. — Photo: Sampath Kumar G.P.

BANGALORE: Colleges give students a dressing down if they bare too much.

Old enough to drive, to vote and even get married if you are a girl, but not to wear what one wants.

In college, that is.

No T-shirts. No jeans and no sleeveless tops.

Fashion quotient

Even as the college admission process is in full swing, those who fancy their fashion quotient are advised to check out the dress code laid down by them.

A number of institutions are rolling up their sleeves and bringing down their boot on what they perceive as inappropriate clothes.

Bored of wearing prim uniforms for more than a decade, quite a few students are not best pleased that they have to dress in a manner approved by college authorities.

`Ridiculous'

Prathibha Sekar, a second semester biotechnology student, says, "A dress code is ridiculous. I think we are responsible enough the way we carry ourselves. Besides, there is no guarantee that people won't dress provocatively even with the dress code."

A women's college, which had banned sleeveless tops, was soon reduced to asking girls to remove their jackets to check if they were guilty of breaking the dress code.

Not surprisingly, some parents have no qualms with the code.

`Excellent'

"I think it is excellent; children need some sort of a guideline," says Samina Shafiq, mother of a 19-year-old student. Interestingly, dress codes are also being imposed in single-sex colleges.

Shoma Chakrawarty (18), a student, says, "If the idea is to keep attention off one's clothing or the lack there of, it really should not matter whether it's a same sex or co-ed institution."

A college on Hosur Road has different dress codes for different combinations. Students of the college deem this quite unfair.

`Discriminatory'

"It's just discriminatory. The choice of my course should have nothing to do with my dressing style, unless of course I am doing a vocational course," says a student.

sBut Anil Pinto, media faculty at the college, justifies the management's stand saying, "Only visible combinations have a dress code. Namely, FEP, BBM, BHM, MSCom and so on while traditional courses such as sociology, history do not have a code, not an explicit one at least.

"It has more to do with the department trying to gain visibility, groom the students to the expectations of the industry, and create an identity for the department."

Not all students oppose a dress code.

Some of them actually want one or at least a partial dress code.

Anita Gulanikar (19) of a law school feels they should have a dress code three days a week.

Feel good

"We should have the best of both worlds. We represent a high calibre educational institution, so one should dress well and feel good," she says.

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