Achi news desk-
Students at the Curé-Antoine-Labelle high school in Valvale, north of Montreal, are protesting Thursday after they say their school administration began pushing what they call a “sexist” dress code.
“She [a member of the staff] Said my knees were pulling the boys. I didn’t understand why,” said Tali Cloutier, a high school 5 student. “She just said it word for word. Your knees attract the boys; You must go home.”
The students say that when the temperatures started to rise outside, they started getting warnings about the length of their shorts.
“It’s kind of humiliating, I would say, to be discriminated against by shorts,” one student told CTV News.
Cloutier adds that her home is a 30-minute walk from the school.
“I’m not going to walk 30 minutes in the sun to come back with pants,” Cloutier said. “I’m not going to do that.”
In addition, she insists that the measures affect almost exclusively female students.
“The shorts we wear as students cover our bodies in a dignified manner and do not allow anything inappropriate to appear,” she wrote in a letter to Noovo Info.
The Sec 5 student points out that the school’s ventilation system is lackluster and claims that there is no air conditioning.
“That’s why the temperatures are higher inside the classrooms than outside,” she said. “These temperatures do not create a suitable environment for education.”
In a message to parents, the school administration states that according to the dress code, “the minimum length for shorts and Bermuda shorts must be near the knee.”
The message goes on to say that “if it is found that a student does not meet the requirements, he will have to change clothes, if they have any with them, or he will be sent home to change clothes.”
