The freedom to (un)dress - by Ebenco
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The freedom to (un)dress - by Ebenco
From The Guardian
The freedom to (un)dress
By Ebenezer Obadare
O N Wednesday June 9, The Guardian reported on the newly-found determination of the authorities of both the University of Lagos (UNILAG) and the French Language Village to take a stricter view of what the respective administrations called 'indecent appearance' on their campuses. This decision will not come as a shock to anyone who has closely monitored developments in our higher institutions over the past five years or so, as mobilisation for what, for the purposes of this article, we might call sartorial rectitude, has been long in the making.
It arguably started at the University of Ibadan (fittingly, for it is the nation's premier university) about four years ago when its authorities decided to clamp down on the explosion of 'indecent dressing' on the campus, particularly among female students. The school's authorities, apparently scandalised at the sight of skimpy skirts and provocatively positioned thongs, decided to impose what they called a 'dress code' (complete with the right measurements and sizes for skirts and blouses) for female undergraduates. Since that time, and especially over the past six months, series of letters have appeared in the national dailies decrying the moral collapse in the universities and largely putting the blame on the 'outrageous things' that female undergraduates wear.
Now, the authorities at UNILAG have arguably taken a step further by re-enacting a similar 'dress code', this time bringing within its purview male students who are in the habit of exposing either their biceps or chests " both hairy and otherwise. According to the school's acting Deputy Registrar in charge of information, Mr. Segun Ogunsolu, male and female students are henceforth forbidden from wearing 'inappropriate outfits' which reveal 'sensitive parts of the body' such as busts, the chest, the belly, upper arms and buttocks. Even bathroom slippers are not spared, and presumably it is only a matter of time before the code is expanded to include university faculty. The justification of the UNILAG administration has been uncannily similar to its counterpart at the University of Ibadan " 'indecent' dressing is clearly an emblem of the moral decay in our universities in particular, and in the Nigerian society in general. Therefore, and for me this is the unfortunate logic of their position, the ban on mini skirts, tubes, mono-straps, hot thongs and bare chests ought to be seen as the first inevitable step in putting train of the Nigerian society back on the rails of moral salvation.
I have two aims in this article " first is to expose the shallowness and unsustainability of this association between sartorial choice and morality; and second, to show how the very announcement constitutes a violation of the right of university undergraduates (both female and male) to dress in a style of their own choosing. I also would like to argue that the decision of the university authorities constitutes an invasion of the privacy of the students, for which I expect the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) (and feminist organisations around the country) to institute legal action against the authorities of the University of Lagos. I am worried that if this challenge is not mounted, the students will be expanding space for the kind of ordeal now regularly experienced by a growing number of young women across the country. These innocent victims (and I number in this category a rising number of female youth corps members in different parts of the north) have been humiliated by self-appointed moral supervisors for no other crime than wearing a pair of trousers.
There is no doubt a festering climate of intolerance on our campuses, and in this context I speak of two interrelated processes " the historical opposition to alternative ideas which has turned universities in Nigeria into virtual intellectual deserts; and the escalating mutual hostility at the level of religious identity. Sadly, students themselves are largely implicated in these two processes. In the case of the latter for instance, we have the totally unfortunate situation in which our campuses are becoming carved up into mutually antagonistic spheres of pernicious influence between student-disciples who would rather either we 'die not except as a Muslim' or 'save our lives for Jesus'.
I am partly interested in this latter phenomenon because I think it is partly responsible for the situation today in which students (and increasingly faculty) tend to be judged, not by the merit of their work, but on the basis of morality defined in the most by strictly metaphysical criteria. I think this dynamic constitutes a grave danger to the survival of the universities as credible, secular, knowledge-producing institutions, and the current misguided attempt to impose morality through acceptable dressing is just one of its inevitable, if sad, consequences.
Let us carefully consider the case of the universities' authorities. One is the association between the mode of dressing (particularly of female students) and morality and/or decadence. Its first error is to presume that once you can get the hem of female students to sweep the floor, you are already halfway in the project of turning them into moral paragons. As any student of human behaviour knows, what you wear, and who you are, are in fact two different things and there is in fact no direct relationship between the two. Think for one of the moral difference between the short sleeves of Tunji Braithwaite and the flowing robes of the looters who presided over the second republic. Second, it is difficult to see how an undergraduate's choice of dressing might affect their academic performance. Female (and male) students in Western universities enjoy a freedom of dressing, and there is no observable negative effect on their academic performance.
Third, the argument has been canvassed that the way female undergraduates dress actually constitutes an invitation to rape, and is indeed the most important variable in the rising incidence of sexual violence across our university campuses and other tertiary institutions. I would like to enter two counter-arguments in this respect. The first is that beyond mere anecdotal regurgitation, this linkage has never been validated by any credible research. In any case, the linkage is most unlikely, especially as studies of rape and sexual depravity in general have been known to implicate a variety of environmental factors including, ironically, the very climate of sexual repression which an all-embracing dressing code is most likely to enthrone.
I will return to this point shortly but as a follow up to the latter point, perhaps one ought also to add that blaming female students for incidents of rape is tantamount to blaming the victim. As the Yoruba adage admonishes, rather than blame the owner of a stolen item for keeping it where a potential thief might gain access to it, we should collectively condemn the action of the thief. I strongly reject that any incidence of rape might be justified by the mode of dressing of the female victim, and to miss this point is to create a moral allowance for male violators in a context like ours that is already fundamentally rigged against the female victim.
The final point I would like to underscore concerns the climate of sexual repression which I briefly alluded to in the foregoing paragraph. My basic hypothesis in this regard (and I admit this may not even be clear to the designers of the dress code) is that there is a fundamental unease with the female body in general (especially its exposure) which the two 'world' religions which have almost completely captured Nigerian campuses share. This is partly reflected in the obsession to cover the entire body and, as it were, leave everything to the imagination. While I have no problem with this, as I imagine that it is within the rights of a university student to decide the way he or she would rather dress, what I find surprising is the failure to see or rather the reluctance to accept, that the right to cover up automatically presumes the right to reveal. Lest I am misunderstood, I am by no means advocating complete nudity (the theoretical basis for my personal rejection being a different matter entirely), but merely defending the right of the student to choose, whether in terms of the ideological coloration of the newspaper he or she wishes to buy, or the design or form of skirt or trousers he or she wishes to wear. Or isn't the freedom to choose part of the freedom of expression
Still, the most unfortunate thing about this silly dress code is the way it might occlude more fundamental matters about the environment in which our students live, whether in Ojoo, in Ife, or in Zaria. The situation in the student hostels is best compared to one of the more unfortunate cameos from Abu Ghraib prison where Iraqi prisoners who to all intents and purposes were still alive were made to lie on top of one another in a condition of extreme humiliation. Today, majority of students in our universities are living like animals in extremely humiliating circumstances, and defining a dress code for them is certainly not my favourite departure point for grappling with the issues at stake here. In any case, if there is anyone who should be leading a debate about morality, it certainly cannot be the authorities of any Nigerian university who are themselves imbricated in the moral impasse in which the 'ivory' towers have today found themselves.
Let the authorities at UNILAG, the University of Ibadan, the French Village and other similarly inspired campuses put aside the ringworm of 'correct' dressing and focus on finding a cure for the leprosy of collapse of physical infrastructure.
Obadare is Ford Foundation International Fellow at the Centre for Civil Society, London School of Economics and Political Science.
The freedom to (un)dress
By Ebenezer Obadare
O N Wednesday June 9, The Guardian reported on the newly-found determination of the authorities of both the University of Lagos (UNILAG) and the French Language Village to take a stricter view of what the respective administrations called 'indecent appearance' on their campuses. This decision will not come as a shock to anyone who has closely monitored developments in our higher institutions over the past five years or so, as mobilisation for what, for the purposes of this article, we might call sartorial rectitude, has been long in the making.
It arguably started at the University of Ibadan (fittingly, for it is the nation's premier university) about four years ago when its authorities decided to clamp down on the explosion of 'indecent dressing' on the campus, particularly among female students. The school's authorities, apparently scandalised at the sight of skimpy skirts and provocatively positioned thongs, decided to impose what they called a 'dress code' (complete with the right measurements and sizes for skirts and blouses) for female undergraduates. Since that time, and especially over the past six months, series of letters have appeared in the national dailies decrying the moral collapse in the universities and largely putting the blame on the 'outrageous things' that female undergraduates wear.
Now, the authorities at UNILAG have arguably taken a step further by re-enacting a similar 'dress code', this time bringing within its purview male students who are in the habit of exposing either their biceps or chests " both hairy and otherwise. According to the school's acting Deputy Registrar in charge of information, Mr. Segun Ogunsolu, male and female students are henceforth forbidden from wearing 'inappropriate outfits' which reveal 'sensitive parts of the body' such as busts, the chest, the belly, upper arms and buttocks. Even bathroom slippers are not spared, and presumably it is only a matter of time before the code is expanded to include university faculty. The justification of the UNILAG administration has been uncannily similar to its counterpart at the University of Ibadan " 'indecent' dressing is clearly an emblem of the moral decay in our universities in particular, and in the Nigerian society in general. Therefore, and for me this is the unfortunate logic of their position, the ban on mini skirts, tubes, mono-straps, hot thongs and bare chests ought to be seen as the first inevitable step in putting train of the Nigerian society back on the rails of moral salvation.
I have two aims in this article " first is to expose the shallowness and unsustainability of this association between sartorial choice and morality; and second, to show how the very announcement constitutes a violation of the right of university undergraduates (both female and male) to dress in a style of their own choosing. I also would like to argue that the decision of the university authorities constitutes an invasion of the privacy of the students, for which I expect the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) (and feminist organisations around the country) to institute legal action against the authorities of the University of Lagos. I am worried that if this challenge is not mounted, the students will be expanding space for the kind of ordeal now regularly experienced by a growing number of young women across the country. These innocent victims (and I number in this category a rising number of female youth corps members in different parts of the north) have been humiliated by self-appointed moral supervisors for no other crime than wearing a pair of trousers.
There is no doubt a festering climate of intolerance on our campuses, and in this context I speak of two interrelated processes " the historical opposition to alternative ideas which has turned universities in Nigeria into virtual intellectual deserts; and the escalating mutual hostility at the level of religious identity. Sadly, students themselves are largely implicated in these two processes. In the case of the latter for instance, we have the totally unfortunate situation in which our campuses are becoming carved up into mutually antagonistic spheres of pernicious influence between student-disciples who would rather either we 'die not except as a Muslim' or 'save our lives for Jesus'.
I am partly interested in this latter phenomenon because I think it is partly responsible for the situation today in which students (and increasingly faculty) tend to be judged, not by the merit of their work, but on the basis of morality defined in the most by strictly metaphysical criteria. I think this dynamic constitutes a grave danger to the survival of the universities as credible, secular, knowledge-producing institutions, and the current misguided attempt to impose morality through acceptable dressing is just one of its inevitable, if sad, consequences.
Let us carefully consider the case of the universities' authorities. One is the association between the mode of dressing (particularly of female students) and morality and/or decadence. Its first error is to presume that once you can get the hem of female students to sweep the floor, you are already halfway in the project of turning them into moral paragons. As any student of human behaviour knows, what you wear, and who you are, are in fact two different things and there is in fact no direct relationship between the two. Think for one of the moral difference between the short sleeves of Tunji Braithwaite and the flowing robes of the looters who presided over the second republic. Second, it is difficult to see how an undergraduate's choice of dressing might affect their academic performance. Female (and male) students in Western universities enjoy a freedom of dressing, and there is no observable negative effect on their academic performance.
Third, the argument has been canvassed that the way female undergraduates dress actually constitutes an invitation to rape, and is indeed the most important variable in the rising incidence of sexual violence across our university campuses and other tertiary institutions. I would like to enter two counter-arguments in this respect. The first is that beyond mere anecdotal regurgitation, this linkage has never been validated by any credible research. In any case, the linkage is most unlikely, especially as studies of rape and sexual depravity in general have been known to implicate a variety of environmental factors including, ironically, the very climate of sexual repression which an all-embracing dressing code is most likely to enthrone.
I will return to this point shortly but as a follow up to the latter point, perhaps one ought also to add that blaming female students for incidents of rape is tantamount to blaming the victim. As the Yoruba adage admonishes, rather than blame the owner of a stolen item for keeping it where a potential thief might gain access to it, we should collectively condemn the action of the thief. I strongly reject that any incidence of rape might be justified by the mode of dressing of the female victim, and to miss this point is to create a moral allowance for male violators in a context like ours that is already fundamentally rigged against the female victim.
The final point I would like to underscore concerns the climate of sexual repression which I briefly alluded to in the foregoing paragraph. My basic hypothesis in this regard (and I admit this may not even be clear to the designers of the dress code) is that there is a fundamental unease with the female body in general (especially its exposure) which the two 'world' religions which have almost completely captured Nigerian campuses share. This is partly reflected in the obsession to cover the entire body and, as it were, leave everything to the imagination. While I have no problem with this, as I imagine that it is within the rights of a university student to decide the way he or she would rather dress, what I find surprising is the failure to see or rather the reluctance to accept, that the right to cover up automatically presumes the right to reveal. Lest I am misunderstood, I am by no means advocating complete nudity (the theoretical basis for my personal rejection being a different matter entirely), but merely defending the right of the student to choose, whether in terms of the ideological coloration of the newspaper he or she wishes to buy, or the design or form of skirt or trousers he or she wishes to wear. Or isn't the freedom to choose part of the freedom of expression
Still, the most unfortunate thing about this silly dress code is the way it might occlude more fundamental matters about the environment in which our students live, whether in Ojoo, in Ife, or in Zaria. The situation in the student hostels is best compared to one of the more unfortunate cameos from Abu Ghraib prison where Iraqi prisoners who to all intents and purposes were still alive were made to lie on top of one another in a condition of extreme humiliation. Today, majority of students in our universities are living like animals in extremely humiliating circumstances, and defining a dress code for them is certainly not my favourite departure point for grappling with the issues at stake here. In any case, if there is anyone who should be leading a debate about morality, it certainly cannot be the authorities of any Nigerian university who are themselves imbricated in the moral impasse in which the 'ivory' towers have today found themselves.
Let the authorities at UNILAG, the University of Ibadan, the French Village and other similarly inspired campuses put aside the ringworm of 'correct' dressing and focus on finding a cure for the leprosy of collapse of physical infrastructure.
Obadare is Ford Foundation International Fellow at the Centre for Civil Society, London School of Economics and Political Science.
