Changing the dress code, face first

Hooded sweatshirts, hoodies to the teenagers who wear them, are becoming the latest banned item at Boston-area schools because some students use them to hide their identity beneath hoods when they're cutting class or shuttling stolen goods from the building.

Citing safety and decorum, Randolph Public Schools is poised to ban hoodies later this month, along with baseball caps and other nonreligious headcoverings, from middle and high school classrooms and hallways.

Hoodies pose a safety threat, area school officials say, for several reasons. Students, perhaps after doing something wrong, can make a quick, anonymous exit from school by shielding their faces from security cameras. Nonstudents can blend in and sneak in and out of the school. Also, students can hide contraband more easily.

"We've got kids who may be up to something and avoid the cameras by crouching down, pulling their hoods up, and scooting by," said Maureen C. Kenney, a Randolph School Committee member who helped devise the proposed guidelines.

For similar reasons, numerous other Massachusetts communities as well as schools in California and New York have also set limits on hoodies, a wardrobe staple among teenagers . Policies range from requiring students to keep hoods off their heads and away from their faces to leaving them in their lockers. Schools that ban hoodies also often ban pajamas, midriff-baring tops, and flip-flops.

Penalties for violating Randolph's dress code, which the School Committee will vote on Aug. 31, could include detention, suspension, and, ultimately, expulsion, if a student continues to flout the dress code, said Ronald DiGuilio, a Randolph School Committee member. Four of the board's five members said they would vote for the change and said they have received mostly positive feedback from parents, though many students are unhappy.

Some parents, however, say that the committee is going overboard and that the change would add an unnecessary burden for teachers, who already have too many rules to enforce.

``The whole thing is foolish," said Leslie Levine, whose son is a Randolph High senior. ``You'll never be able to convince me that it's a safety issue. The hooded sweatshirts are a fashion statement, especially for boys. They're not going to buy sweaters to keep them warm."

A panel of School Committee members, parents, students, and school administrators developed the proposed policy in meetings over the last three months.

Erin Benefit, a seventh-grader at Randolph Community Middle School, said the ban would cramp her style because she likes to dress in track pants and hooded sweatshirts. The 12-year-old said she's not used to worrying about the dress code. The rules prohibiting skimpy clothing such as tube tops, halters, and spaghetti straps don't affect what she wears.

Her mother, Nancy Benefit, said she wishes the school had notified parents of the change earlier, before she took Erin shopping for school clothes and bought her two new hooded sweatshirts.

``This is ridiculous, because that's what my daughter wears," said Nancy Benefit. ``We were just saying last night that we have to go buy new clothes for school, sweatshirts without hoods, I guess."

Other parents say it's hypocritical of the schools to ban hoodies when athletic teams and other student groups sell hooded sweatshirts to promote school spirit and, in some cases, to raise money. The Randolph Parent Teacher Organization sold hooded school sweatshirts last year as a fund-raiser. Even teachers wear them in class.

Darielle Grossman, a junior at Randolph High, owns about a dozen sweaters, shirts, and sweatshirts with hoods.

``My mom won't let me out of the house with a hoodie if it's the school policy," Grossman said. ``Honestly, I'm hoping the rules won't be enforced."

This debate appears to have begun when New Bedford High School banned them because administrators were having difficulty discerning outsiders with hoods over their heads from students at the school, said Superintendent Michael Longo, who instituted the ban as headmaster in 1992.

Enforcement has not been a problem, Longo said. Students agree to comply with the ban at the start of each school year. Students in hoodies are asked to remove them. If they resist, a parent is called. Only a couple of students have been suspended for refusing to change over the years, he said.

Watertown High School students protested a ban in 1995 and won the right to wear the sweatshirts, without the hood up, in class.

As concerns about school safety escalated in recent years, more schools began restricting hoodies. Marshfield prohibited students from wearing hoodies two years ago, and Sharon High instituted a partial ban last year, allowing the sweatshirts, but only if the hoods are down.

Schools with dress codes tend to have higher academic achievement and fewer incidents of violence, said William Lassiter, manager of the Raleigh, N.C.-based Center for the Prevention of School Violence. But targeting hoodies so it's easier to catch students doing something wrong on camera won't stop them from stealing or skipping school, he said.

``Overall, video cameras just catch things after they happen," Lassiter said. ``We would much rather [school officials] look at . . . why are kids running off campus anyway? That's the root cause of the problem, not the sweatshirts."

Tracy Jan can be reached at tjan@globe.com.