BS BULLETIN:
- Tuskegee University President Mark Brown is defending the school’s renewed emphasis on professional dress, including restrictions on durags, bonnets and other non-religious head coverings in classrooms.
- Critics say the rules restrict student expression and amount to “respectability politics,” but Brown isn’t budging: “If you raise the bar, students will reach it.”
- Brown says this is about much more than clothes — punctuality, internships, certifications, interview skills and professional behavior are all part of preparing students to actually get and keep jobs.
Something strange is happening on a college campus.
The president is telling students the real world has standards.
Tuskegee University President Dr. Mark Brown, a retired Air Force major general, is standing behind the historically Black university’s renewed push for professional dress and conduct after restrictions on durags, bonnets and other non-religious head coverings drew criticism.
“If you raise the bar, students will reach it,” Brown told Fox News Digital.
“Why don’t we raise the bar? That’s what I think we ought to do. We’re unapologetic about that part.”
Imagine that.
Brown said students were told before arriving on campus to have business suits and shoes ready for business-related meetings and to dress professionally in classrooms.
Then he went walking around campus during the first days of class to see what happened.
“The bar was raised and it was being reached,” Brown told Fox.
His concern is what happens when schools do the opposite.
“If you lower the bar, or if you go past the mistake and fail to address it: That becomes the standard.”
Brown’s larger argument may irritate his critics even more because he isn’t pretending employers will suddenly stop making judgments about how applicants present themselves.
“It’s not the world we wish you were going into, it’s the world you’re going to go into,” Brown said. “It’s not the way that we wish an employer would perceive you. It’s the way the employer will perceive you.”
That’s the philosophy behind a much broader Tuskegee effort.
The university wants graduates showing up on time, completing internships, earning professional certifications, learning interview skills and knowing how to conduct themselves in a workplace.
“We want them job-ready,” Brown said.
He even pointed to students routinely arriving late for class as something colleges shouldn’t simply shrug off.
What good, Brown asked, is allowing somebody to practice being late for four or five years only to discover that a 4.0 GPA won’t save a job when the same habit follows them into the workplace?
The crackdown has critics.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression argues that Tuskegee can’t promise broad freedom of expression while imposing extensive rules on what adult students can wear.
“Preparing students for professional life is a legitimate goal,” FIRE Senior Program Counsel Haley Gluhanich told Fox, but she argued that goal doesn’t require controlling what students wear to class or lunch.
There’s also the money question.
Professional wardrobes aren’t cheap, particularly at a school where Brown says roughly 70% of students are Pell Grant eligible.
Tuskegee has an answer for that too.
Its Golden Tiger Community Closet provides professional clothing to students who need it. The program has operated since 2023, and Delta Sigma Theta recently donated more than 1,000 pieces of professional clothing to it.
“If a student needs help with that, we’re going to help them,” Brown told Fox. “That’s not going to be the barrier between compliance and getting ready.”
And Brown offered one number he’d rather people argue about.
Roughly 70% of Tuskegee’s May graduates, he said, already had jobs lined up.
“Seven out of every 10,” Brown said. “That is the challenge. That’s what we should be debating.”
MY QUICK TAKE
Somewhere along the way, telling college students to dress appropriately, arrive on time and prepare for a job became controversial.
Brown’s response amounts to: argue about society all you want — but I’m sending my students into it prepared.
A retired major general telling young adults, “Raise the bar,” rather than lowering it until nobody can trip over it?
More colleges might want to try this experiment.
DBS WIRE SOURCES
- Fox News — Tuskegee University President Defends Dress Code Amid Criticism: ‘Raise the Bar, Students Will Reach It’
- Tuskegee University — Tuskegee University Ensures Students Are Dressed for Success
- Tuskegee University — Dear Beloved Students From Dr. Brown, President and CEO
- Tuskegee University — Delta Sigma Theta Supports Student Success With Major Professional Wardrobe Donation
- Tuskegee University — New Student Orientation Welcomes Class of 2030 to Mother Tuskegee
