Dress-related behavioral problems and violence in the public school setting: Prevention, intervention, and policy--a holistic approach

Journal of Negro Education, The, Summer 1996 by Lillian O Holloman, Velma LaPoint, Sylvan I Alleyne, Ruth J Palmer, Kathy Sanders-Phillips

Among contemporary schoolchildren, wearing certain items or brands of clothing, particularly those associated with celebrity status or gang membership, is accompanied by serious problems including peer competition and ostracism, theft, assault, and even murder. Increasingly, dress code and uniform policies have been implemented in public schools to reduce and prevent such problems. This article describes the nature of dress-related conflicts for Black public school students and parents across socialization and contextual settings. Casting the issue holistically as a health and safety concern, it examines the implications of policies and practices that have been offered to address these problems.

INTRODUCTION Many urban and suburban public school systems in the United States have experienced problems among students that involve dress and appearance. At one end of the spectrum, these problems, which frequently include factors related to students' ethnicity, social class, and neighborhood residence, include peer competition, ostracism, and teasing about dress. They also include poor academic achievement and attendance resulting from dress-related concerns. At the other end, serious threats to students' health and safety include those related to gang-affiliated clothing and clothing theft that may be accompanied by violent assaults and even murder.

For example, Pan (1995b) and Frazier and Pan (1995) relate an incident involving a high school honor student who was murdered while waiting for a school bus with other students in front of a suburban Maryland school. The student was an innocent bystander, felled during a robbery in which two masked and armed assailants stole another student's jacket in broad daylight. After firing the fatal shots, one of the two then boarded the almost-full bus and robbed another student of a jacket before fleeing. The garments sought by the assailants: knee-length parkas, popular items among Washington, D.C. area teenagers at the time, that sold for about $300. Robberies of such jackets-those with brand names were especially coveted-and of shearling coats and certain athletic shoes were reported with increasing frequency throughout Washington's suburbs (Pan, 1995b). Most of the early reports of dress-related behavior problems at schools suggest that the phenomenon occurs mainly among low-income youth of certain ethnic minority groups, most notably African Americans and Latinos, who represent large numbers of the youth in urban public schools (Alleyne, LaPoint, & Holloman, 1997). In many of these reports, if the ethnicity of the assailants is not explicitly identified, it is certainly implied (a) by the use of certain distinctive labels and stereotypes; (b) by linking the incidents to events occurring in various minority communities; or (c) by targeting reports of dressrelated violence toward predominantly African American, Latino, and other minority audiences (Alleyne et al., 1997). Increasingly, however, similar problems have been reported in suburban schools populated by larger numbers of White, middle-class youth (Pan, 1995b; Thomas, 1994).

Behavioral problems related to dress raise important socialization issues for the nation's public schools. The topic recently received national policy attention in 1996 when President Clinton endorsed the use of uniforms as a means of reducing and preventing dress-related violence and other problems in public schools (Clinton, 1996a, 1996b). The president further directed the U.S. Department of Education (1996) to disseminate written guidelines on introducing uniforms in public schools. Later that year, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton (1996) also expressed concern about dress-related problems among American youth, suggesting that some youth seem to care more about the designer-brand clothing they wear on the outside than about the quality of the character they develop on the inside.

Before and since the president's directives, many schools have attempted to reduce and prevent such problems through the use of dress codes and uniforms. Although such interventions have been implemented or updated in a variety of settings and for a number of years, little empirical research guides their use. This has frequently led some school personnel, other professionals, parents, and the general public to question the efficacy of such interventions (Thomas, 1994; Wexler, 1995). Recently, however, the role of dress codes and uniforms in violence reduction and prevention has been framed as a health and safety issue for students in public schools (LaPoint, Holloman, & Alleyne, 1992). Such an approach places the issue in a context that is broader than that of the schools; it includes and interrelates other socialization contexts such as the family, peers, the media, and the marketplace. Additionally, while it recognizes that violence is the most serious problem associated with dress-related behavior among some students, this approach takes into consideration other problems, some of which are precursors to violence, that often exist in concert with this behavior and consequently demand exploration. Further, looking at dress-related behavior problems from an ecological and interdisciplinary perspective facilitates a holistic understanding of the problem.