On Last Day Of High School, Senior Suspended Over Dress Length

An
Idaho secondary school (high school) senior is
standing up after she was suspended with just
minutes left in the school year on account of a
dispute about the length of her dress.
West Side High School senior Evette Reay, 18, On
Friday with just 30 minutes left in her final day of
high school, she said, was suspended because she
disagreed with a teacher who objected to her dress.
The modest green shift appears to be a few inches
short of meeting the school’s kneecap-length rule.
“I adore the dress, I have no second thoughts about
wearing it, and I would wear it again any day,” Reay
told Yahoo. “I feel great in it and I think everything
ladies need to understand that they ought to wear
what they feel great in.”
The fashion showdown escalated, according to Reay,
when she refused to obey a teacher who ordered her
to go home and change into something that complied
with the dress code.
The teacher, Legrand Leavitt, upped the ante by
threatening to call the superintendent and withhold
her diploma. Reay said she relented and called her
mother to bring a different outfit, but by then school
officials had already suspended her for
insubordination.
“I felt that was very threatening and out-of-line for
the teacher,” Reay told ABC News affiliate Local
News 8 of her interactions with Leavitt.
Leavitt and the school’s principal Tyler Telford told
Reay’s mother that her daughter conducted herself
poorly during the argument. They allege that she got
in Leavitt’s face while she holds that she remained at
least four feet away from him.

West Side School District superintendent Spencer
Barzee told The Huffington Post that state and
federal laws prevent him from discussing an
individual student’s discipline.
“In my own opinion, there must be a lull in news if
you are covering this story,” he added.
But punishing female students for violating rigid
dress codes comes up again and again, and many
see this as a chauvinistic way of treating girls and
young women.
Last month, a dad took his 5-year-old daughter’s
school to task for forcing her to cover her sundress
with a t-shirt and pants because of its spaghetti-
straps . Last year, Haven Middle School in Evanston,
Ill. made national headlines for banning leggings and
yoga pants.
“For me, it’s about shaming girls about their bodies,”
Juliet Bond, a parent to a student at Haven, told the
Evanston Review last year. “It’s this message across
genders that girls have to cover up, and teachers
saying to girls, the reason for this rule is so that boys
aren’t distracted .”
Experts back her up.
“It’s certainly going to give women the idea that the
exposure of their bodies is a negative thing,” Carrie
Preston, a Boston University professor in women’s
studies, told Boston.com earlier this month. “There’s
discomfort with the sexuality of minors, but these
concerns are not best addressed by dress codes.”
Reay finished school on Monday, Yahoo reported,
and will attend Idaho State University’s honors
program next year.