Several Hermiston High School students and parents say enforcement of the school’s dress code is unfair and sends the wrong messages to female students.

“You’re not teaching these kids anything,” one mother told the Hermiston School Board at a meeting Monday. “You’re telling girls to sit down, shut up and be told what to do by males. And that’s just not appropriate.”

One man told the board he supported the administration’s enforcement of the code. Eight more speakers — a mix of students and parents — each opposed how school administrators and teachers were enforcing the code.

High school staff on Aug. 29, the first day of classes, stopped 62 students, most of them young women, at the front entrance to the school and took them to the office for breaking the school’s dress code.

Two students, Piper Snyder and Adriana Gutierrez, started a Change.org petition to ask for changes in the dress code. As of Wednesday, almost 2,800 people had signed the online document.

Snyder, who spoke at the board meeting, said this issue goes beyond students wanting to wear a crop-top to school.

“Girls have been publicly shamed, laughed at and taken away from their learning multiple times in the span of two weeks just because of what they chose to wear to school,” she told the board.

“We are not professionals. We are not getting paid to go to school. We are going there to learn,” Snyder said, but female students come to Hermiston High School where “they are instantly looked up and down” for dress code violations.

And while the school administration says the dress code is for boys and girls, she said, “We see boys wearing T-shirts showing drugs and see-through tops showing their chest area.”

Snyder said one teacher told a class, “Rape has a dress code,” and an administrator told students what they wear shows what kind of person they are.

Rather than enforcing the dress code, she said, the school is teaching girls they have to be responsible for boys’ actions while not teaching boys they need to respect girls.

“We should be able to express who we are and feel comfortable around people we’ve known for years,” she protested.

Michael Snyder, Piper’s father, in an email after the meeting said. “Students and parents were allowed to speak to provide examples of how this has negatively impacted student’s self esteem and body image, and many parents spoke about the trauma their children have endured by HHS staff over the past three weeks.”

Parent Nate Williams read to the board a message from his wife about their daughter, who started her first day of high school happy and eager, but came home 15 minutes later in tears because she was “dress coded” but without any explanation. And last week, he said, administrators took her out of class because she removed a sweater after her physical education class and exposed a bra strap.

Her attire was not a distraction in class, Williams said, but the administrators created a distraction. School staff also have unfairly enforced the dress code, he said, targeting female students for even adjusting their clothes.

Hermiston High senior Stormie Richmond also was part of the chorus.

“This dress code is bigger than me,” she said. “I am here today to fight for my fellow peers who have been victimized by this irrational approach by enforcing this dress code.”

The students are proposing the dress code to be no more than 2 inches of midriff be shown and no more than 3 inches below the collarbone be shown.

“This seems reasonable due to the current evolution of style in 2022, and comes along with women being able to speak of their experiences of being discriminated against in the year of 2022,” Richmond said.

The high school’s dress code states: “Responsibility for personal dress and grooming rests primarily with students and their parents. HHS believes that schools are workplaces and must be treated as such.”

Hermiston High School Principal Tom Spoo on Sept. 7 agreed to answer questions via email from the Hermiston Herald. Spoo as of Tuesday had not replied. Sept. 13 has yet to reply.

“I think it was a wonderful educational experience for the students,” said Michael Snyder, Piper’s father. “By the end of the meeting the school board directed Tricia Mooney, the superintendent of Hermiston School District, to look into this matter, which she said she would.”

He said he thinks the dress code issue comes down to Title IX and equity. Title IX is the most commonly used name for the federal civil rights law in the United States that was enacted as part of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other education program that receives funding from the federal government.

According to him, both the U.S. Department of Education and the American Civil Liberties Union have successfully challenged dress codes all over the United States based on how schools encored their policies.

“It doesn’t matter if the policy doesn’t single out a particular sex, what matters is who the policy is being used against, and in this case it is overwhelmingly the female students at the school, and that is unconstitutional sex-based discrimination,” he said.

He also explained the term “equity” refers to fairness and justice and is distinguished from equality, which means providing the same to all. Equity, he said, recognizes everyone does not start from the same place and must acknowledge and make adjustments to imbalances.

“Hermiston High School offers all students an excellent opportunity to learn,” he said, “however after hearing all the students speak it’s obvious that it’s not the same excellent experience for all. If the opportunity doesn’t match the experience, then we have an issue with equity.”