‘Round the time my show started, someone tweeted a link with the new dress code at Morehouse. Here it is.
Much of the discussion on this has centered around the prohibition of customarily female clothing on campus. In the linked post, much is made of the “heteronormativity” of the code but, I must admit, I’m not qualified to discuss a term whose meaning I’m not totally familiar with. I can add the prefix, base, and suffix, but I’m sure there’s more to it than such a clinical interpretation.
Nope. My problem is with Morehouse’s refusal to let dudes be who they are.
That’s an important point if Morehouse continues to posit itself as the last bastion of the upwardly mobile black man. The tone of the linked post carries that assertion. I attended my nephew’s graduation from Morehouse, and I heard someone on stage (I believe the President) say the same thing. Saw it on the preface of this dress code, too.

It is our expectation that students who select Morehouse do so because of the College’s outstanding legacy of producing leaders. On the campus and at College-sponsored events and activities, students at Morehouse College will be expected to dress neatly and appropriately at all times.

So I’m assuming this dress code is being administered because this is how Morehouse believes leaders should behave.
What a load of bullshit.
Look, if you want to tell people how they can dress in class, I won’t agree with you, but I wouldn’t say anything about it. The disincentive to being underdressed is…being underdressed. That’s how it’s always gone in my life. If you’re willing to deal with people looking at you funny and all of that, it’s your world. That’s where the punishment typically comes from. But if you want to foster a certain climate for classes, I can kinda roll with that.
But the cafeteria?

1. No caps, do-rags and/or hoods in classrooms, the cafeteria, or other indoor venues. This policy item does not apply to headgear considered as a part of religious or cultural dress.

10 a.m. on a Saturday morning, and I can’t wear a do-rag? Explain to me what that has to do with leadership. I’d like to know.
Let’s keep going, shall we?

3. Decorative orthodontic appliances (e.g. “grillz”) be they permanent or removable, shall not be worn on the campus or at College-sponsored events.


Decorative orthodontic appliances? Go ahead and laugh at that one.
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Welcome back. Again, not in class? OK. Nowhere on campus? Why not?
Oh yeah, let’s not forget the gender/sexuality thing.

9. No wearing of clothing associated with women’s garb (dresses, tops, tunics, purses, pumps, etc.) on the Morehouse campus or at College-sponsored events.


Now, this trips into the elephant at Morehouse — homosexuality. I won’t comment much on it, other than to say that I went to my alma mater because I thought it had great looking women, and I certainly understand how gay men would be drawn to a school full of dudes. It only makes sense. Regardless of how much some would prefer this not be the case, gay men will apply to Morehouse in droves as long as the doors are open. If you’re looking for a man, you might as well meet a leader, right?
I won’t speak much on it because, beyond respecting everyone’s human rights, I could care less about how many gay men do or don’t go to Morehouse. I will say, however, that everyone has the right to be comfortable in their own homes, so long as that comfort does not actively interfere with someone else’s. And if you’re comfortable in a sundress, you should be able to wear a sundress in your home.
College, for so many of us, was home. Why should those cats that want to wear dresses be asked not to? Simply because you think it’s weird? Suddenly, I think that “heteronormativity” thing makes sense.
I was discussing this dress code on Twitter with someone I don’t know. He’d said that this dress code, hopefully, would keep “the riffraff” out. I asked him what the “riffraff” was. He said it was people that don’t go to class and that these provisions would have made Morehouse less attractive to the people that didn’t go to class.
He then told me this was not elitism. I mean, what else could it be?
What’s undeniable is that Morehouse, unlike any other black college, seeks to indoctrinate its students into a certain type of behavior. Any Morehouse grad that denies this is a liar. Things like this dress code are a part of that indoctrination.
Bad news — I would never attend a school with this dress code. Not because I wear golds or sag my pants or think I have a God-given right to wear my do rag. It’s because I think anyone this concerned with how people dress is a moron, and I’ll be damned if a moron can turn me into a leader. That doesn’t make any sense to me.
I know plenty of leaders. I was raised by a couple of them. I’ve met them in the streets. I’ve seen them in action.
Conformity did not make them leaders. Aligning with a prescribed notion of how they should or should not behave on their own times certainly does not make leaders. An obsessive concern with how you look and “defying stereotypes” doesn’t do it, either. That makes worker bees. Nattily dressed worker bees, I’m sure, but NOT leaders.
That’s because this isn’t about creating leaders. C’mon now. Were these measures limited to classes, convocations and ceremonies, it would be one thing. But once you start telling people what to do whenever they’re on campus, you’re forcing a standardized notion of what they should be onto them. Then you want them to lead? Yeah, that makes sense.
It’s not about what those boys do. This is about who they are, and Morehouse doesn’t want dudes that like to wear golds…unless they’re set to become someone else.
It’s divisive, bourgeois bullshit. If you think how someone dresses in the cafeteria is determining his path in life, I don’t understand how you were smart enough to get into such a fine academic institution (and I give that compliment to the school without sarcasm).
If you wanna wear your golds, wear ’em. If you love them so much that you don’t care about the condescending stares you’ll get from your classmates, do it. If you’re confident enough in yourself to know that, no matter how those folks look down their noses at you, you’re a bad man that happens to wear gold teeth, wear em. Make those take you for who you are and respect you. And if you wanna do the same in a dress, it’s your world.
That is what leaders do, especially when their on their own times. If you wanna make a leader, you take that person for whom he or she is, then you strengthen that person. You do not, however, tell him or her whom to be.
It’s well-known I’m not a fan of Morehouse. Nicest thing I can say about the place is it has one helluva neighbor.
I had to get up and leave the graduation in May. I did so because I found the elitism to be nauseating. The tone that they were better than them permeated the ceremony, and I couldn’t take it. That them sounds a whole lot like me and my friends.
Maybe we’re the riffraff, like that gentleman said.
The infamous Killa Cal said my problems with Morehouse seem personal. I guess they are, somewhat. Four years of being talked down to by guys that had no clue who they were dealing with was part of it (and I even saw them do so, as a small child, to my mother, who’s so much badder than most of them could dream of being). Part of it’s a natural byproduct of attending a rival school.
But think about this — I am, literally, internationally known, nationally recognized, and locally accepted in my professions, and I turned 29 a month and a half ago. And Morehouse tells guys they should not be like me or my folks. Yes, I take that a bit personally, for them and for me.
Now, Morehouse is a private school. It can do whatever it wants. And what it wants to do is dangerous. At the very least, it’s counterproductive to being a leader. Given that, I’m inclined to believe this dress code is really about something else.
And that something else makes me sick.