Now here’s a college that doesn’t do what everyone thinks a college should acquiesce to:
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According to Fox News:
Tuskegee University President Dr. Mark Brown, a retired Air Force major general, is defending the historically Black university’s renewed emphasis on student dress and conduct standards, saying the policy is aimed at preparing students for the workplace rather than policing personal style.
“If you raise the bar, students will reach it,” Brown told Fox News Digital in an interview.
“Why don’t we raise the bar? That’s what I think we ought to do. We’re unapologetic about that part.”
…The university’s policy has drawn criticism from freedom of expression advocates over restrictions that include bans on items such as durags and bonnets, with some critics framing the rules as “respectability politics.”
So they’re taking flak (ABC News calls it ‘an uproar’) for requiring students to come to class punctually, not stare at their cell phones, and dress presentably — not just to class, but at career functions, seminars, and even the cafeteria — in professional business attire, as if that isn’t going to help those kids succeed.
Are these critics against success?
Why shouldn’t the Tuskegee students be successful on the same terms as everyone else, including those who have had it easier?
It also isn’t happening in a vacuum: In recent years, Alabama’s, Mississippi’s, and Louisiana’s school test scores for black students have surpassed California’s, which spends more than twice the money.
This development follows from it — and seems to harken back to the old black institutions of the first half of the 20th century, as Thomas Sowell once wrote about.
So no do-rags, no pants hanging around the knees, no sleazy prostitute-wear, no pajamas, shower caps and slippers. The kids must dress like they are intelligent and important. In other words, the university is reclaiming the golden era of black culture that Sowell has written about; the era of the Supremes (who were all about self-respect and beauty), and Martin Luther King, Jr. (who always dressed professionally). Basically, they’re reclaiming authentic black heritage from all the Hollywood corrosion of it dating from the second half of the 20th century.
And the president, Dr. Mark A. Brown, who’s a retired Air Force major general who knows a thing or two about the real world, is refusing to back down.
Why should he? He’s obviously got the heart of a tiger, telling Fox News:
“Any higher education institution in the country that’s not focused on student success, no matter what type of university that is, is not focused where they should be. That’s why we exist. That’s exactly why we exist.”
How striking that is in this era of junk majors, massive student debt, unemployability, and students spending all their time in protests.
Tuskegee students aren’t going to have those problems, because Brown is saying ‘not my kids, not on my watch.’.
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He said he wants students to focus on their lessons.
Based on everything he’s said and done — look at his bio — he cares about the kids. He wants them to be successful, to beat the odds, to stand out, to be prepared to move up in the world (U.S. News & World Report ranks the school number one on this front) and to have the resources to do it. He headed up massive federal student aid programs before he returned to Tuskegee as its first alumni president in 2024, and for this requirement to dress professionally, he ensured that a free dress program, the Golden Tigers Community Closet, was available to students who didn’t have money to buy professional clothing, they would still have something to wear.
He emphasized that the idea was all about practice making perfect, telling ABC News:
“The way you dress may have everything to do with the first impression that you make. … whatever is appropriate, you need to have practice before you get there,” he said. “And I don’t think that you, your parents, and others should invest four or five years [at Tuskegee], and then you not know how to make a dynamic, incredible first impression on day one at work.”
And obviously, he understands that it’s a big competitive world out there, some places are obviously fancier with kids who have had this preparation, and he wants his kids to compete credibly with them anyway — on pure merit.
Practice makes perfect.
Some of these kids, who come from poorer backgrounds (about two thirds of whom are on financial aid) don’t have any practice all, which isn’t as patronizing as it sounds. I remember when I was in college, and wanted to dress like The Preppy Handbook denizens, I got a great Brooks Brothers wardrobe with my employee discount working there and tried to get the look. But being from Southern California, I didn’t have much sense of seasons, and now wryly recall pairing dark wool seaters with white linen skirts, and flat Gucci snaffle shoes with Margaret Thatcher-style suits, and thinking I had gotten it right because I got the brands right. Nope, I didn’t get it right and it’s a matter of practice. Sure, I was a rube, but not everyone is exposed to how to dress professionally or will know right away how to tie a tie or pair a handbag with a suit.
The dress requirements give students not just practice in dressing for success, but a sense of pride in being a kind of elite, the kids who are going somewhere, their clothes reminding them of it, and as Brown notes, these raised expectations work. The kids start to think of themselves as somebody valuable, somebody important, and therefore don’t want to get involved in self-destructive things just because television says so. They learn to recognize their own greatness instead.
It’s no different from what our priest at our Catholic church in San Diego told me last week — that the addition of Latin phrases at Mass during Lent makes the parishioners more reverent. Professional dress makes young people more professional because they begin to see themselves as professionals.
The best part of this story is that the university president is not backing down. He’s actually on the cutting edge of an American revival — we see this in young people prefering Latin Mass over other kinds, and kids at Yale making their most popular history course the one on Catholic intellectual tradition, an old classical line of thinking that influenced so much of Western civilization.
In other words, young people long for a connection to their best historical achievements, and imitating them is the way to get them back, if not exceed them.
The good part about this great university president is that Tuskegee will rise in the academic rankings as a result, and Tuskegee graduates will be highly sought after by employers. As word gets around on the success of this, the school will become more competitive to get into (already it has a 49 percent admission rate, meaning more applicants want in than actually get in) and other schools will copy them.
That is leadership, and that is going to elevate education. What a gift this storied old school has in its new president. Since we know his ideas will succeed, we look forward to the success stories that will come of it.
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Image: Screenshot from The April Ryan Show video, posted on YouTube