Now, if you’re blue
And you don’t know where to go to
Why don’t you go where fashion sits
Puttin’ on the Ritz
Different types who wear a daycoat
Pants with stripes and cutaway coat
Perfect fits
Puttin’ on the RitzDressed up like a million dollar trooper
Trying hard to look like Gary Cooper
Super-duperCome, let’s mix where Rockefellers
Walk with sticks or umberellas
In their mitts
Puttin’ on the Ritz— Irving Berlin, “Puttin’ On The Ritz”
Morehouse College, one of the flagship HBCUs in the country and the alma mater of generations of prominent African-American males, including Martin Luther King, recently conjured up some controversy by establishing a dress code on campus. The new policy prohibits do-rags, hats, sunglasses, hoods or offensive clothing in class. It also bans such items as “decorative orthodontic appliances” (A white female friend who is much more “Black” than I am tells me that these things are known, in the vernacular, as “grillz.”), pajamas, sagging pants, and bare feet.
However, the part of the policy that has drawn the most attention from the media — including a certain Philadelphia Negro — states “No wearing of clothing associated with women’s garb (dresses, tops, tunics, purses, pumps, etc.) on the Morehouse campus or at College-sponsored events.”
Some believe, and I think that they are correct, that this policy is a not-so-subtle attempt by the College administration to control homosexuality and transgender identification on campus. Homosexuality is one of the most sensitive issues in the so-called Black community; and it is an open secret that Morehouse has a large population of gay men. For the record, I do not believe that Morehouse is atypical in this regard. College is (or should be) a place of experimentation and exploring boundaries. If we expect intellectual awakenings on a college campus, why should we be surprised that sexual awakenings occur there, as well? Given the generally conservative orientation of Black society, the freedom of expression generally associated with the college campus can be even more powerful for young Black men who do not define themselves — openly or otherwise — as heterosexual.
By choosing to implement a dress code that at least appears to target a specific population of the College community, Morehouse is treading on difficult ground: the fault line between individual expression expected in an academic setting and the culture of conformity — including the “rules” of what it means to be a Black man. Though I have certainly ranted against the extreme informality of undergraduate dress and — in my angrier moods — have even advocated a dress code, I find that ultimately, I cannot support this kind of regulation. While being a “Morehouse man” does carry a certain mystique — in more ways than some would care to admit — attending Morehouse is not, or should not be, like joining the military. The latter needs to engender conformity in order to prepare its members to undertake the serious business of killing people. (The armed services can talk all they wish about education and training opportunities; but the bottom line is that they train people to inflict harm upon our enemies as quickly and efficiently as possible.) Like other institutions of higher learning, Morehouse should encourage the creativity and diversity of its students — even if it means that a few of them look rather stunning in a nice frock.
Each day I am more conscious of the fact that I am from a different time than the one I share with my students. I wear button-downs and khakis, and whistle Mozart and Cole Porter. I voted for Ronald Reagan. The Establishment works for me. I like it. Would I prefer more “conservative” apparel on campus? Yes. But fighting for this is a waste of powder. Morehouse would be wise to invest its resources in the development of young men of character and not the regulation of cravats.
Ultimately, the late Bart Giamatti said it best when he chose to call his book about the purpose of the university Free and Ordered Spaces. He believed that on a college campus (and everywhere else), freedom should not be subordinate to intolerance disguised as discipline. He was right.
Philadelphia Negro 
Morehouse should not submit to the shallow temptation which associates character with style. Nor should the students in question. With the emphasis on character and education any dress code should be nothing more or less than the conventions of society, which in fact they are.
The only real controversy here is that Morehouse ha declared itself out of step with the shallow Progressive and multicultural dicta that ‘the personal is political’. By establishing convention as their standard theyhave not made themselves conservative but anti-radical and that is a prescription radicals find distasteful.
Philadelphia Negro–good post. Thanks for working through some of these issues for us. Did Morehouse include the no-cross-dressing clause in their new policy as a strategy to target gay men or trans women on campus? There are a LOT of men who like women who engage in transvestism, and many American fraternities have traditions of transvesting in performances and to elicit laughs and/or engage in misogyny. Without understanding more about the Morehouse environment, it’s hard to understand completely what this policy was aimed at and what its effects will be.
This dress code certainly draws attention to shifting definitions of the “Morehouse Man,” which as you suggest carries a powerful mystique. Must one be a straight, cis-gendered man to be a “Morehouse Man?” Can one be simultaneously a Morehouse Man and a trans woman? (I would say why not, but it’s interesting to think about how a trans woman would explain her resume to future employers!) Does the presence of trans students destabilize the concept of single-sex education? (I ask this as a Bryn Mawr grad myself!)