Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Baltimore has cancelled its dress code policy against dreadlocks, according to a report by Erica Green in the Baltimore Sun.
After one student withdrew her application to the school because she didn’t want to comb out her dreads, she said, “I was hurt. I like my hair. It’s me. It’s nobody else.”
So, when Ms Green started making inquiries at the school about the dreadlocks policy, the school backpedaled. Ah, the power of the press!
“That policy is no longer in effect, and students who are interested in applying to the school are being made aware that it’s no longer in effect,” the Sun quoted Mary Beth Lennon, communications director and spokeswoman for Cristo Rey, as saying.
Other schools in the US have recently been in the news over hair, particularly hairstyles used mainly by African-American girls.
One blogger from Chicago has tracked several stories of African-American girls whose natural hair styles have been banned at their schools, here. Leila Noelliste reports about a Florida school that also rethought its dreadlocks policy:
Just months after an Ohio school banned afro puffs and 7-year-old Tiana … faced constant harassment from school administrators for her locs, another eerily similar situation has unfolded in Orlando, Florida. After notifying the administrators at Faith Christian Academy that she was being bullied for hair, the school essentially sided with the bullies, telling 12-year-old Vanessa … to either cut and shape her hair or face expulsion.
Expulsion?! Over hair?! I’ve heard about zero tolerance, but this is a ridiculous reason to deprive students of their education.
Faith Christian eventually said that as long as Vanessa styled her hair in an approved style, she would be OK. An afro is not on the list of banned hairstyles, so it’s all good. (Vanessa is not the girl pictured. The girl in the picture attends the Ohio school cited in Ms Noelliste’s blog.)
Personally, I think dreadlocks and these other natural styles are very expressive and individual. From the school’s point of view, they’re certainly not distracting, unsanitary, or anything like that. All this fuss!
