Just noticed that my last two posts at Beachlaw were about San Onofre State Beach here in California abandoning its clothing optional policy, and a city pool in southern Utah being pressured to abandon its ban on bikinis and speedos.  Aside from academic interest due to an article I’ve been trying to write for forever about the different approaches to legislative drafting of silly dresscode ordinances, I’m just terrified to think that Southern California and Southern Utah might actually be of one mind on such an issue, even though they’re racing to the center from such different extremes.

It’s really about freedom of expression and tolerating individuality, which are core values of our society.

The Right to Wear Tigger.  It certainly sounds silly when you say it that way, but the ACLU attorney quoted (and at S.F. Gate) above got it right.  Hopefully paying $95,000 in attorneys fees will help some bureaucrats learn that lesson as well. I’ve never understood how squelching expression in the young was supposed to teach them to responsibly express themselves as adults, but then again I’m not an education bureaucrat. 

For coming to class at a Napa middle school wearing hosiery that portrayed the Winnie the Pooh character — in violation of the school’s solid-colors-only, no-pictures, no-logos dress code — the seventh-grader landed in the principal’s office, and then in a detention program called Students With Attitude Problems.

Now Redwood Middle School and the Napa Valley Unified School District, which approved the code, have landed in court.

The school’s “unconstitutionally vague, overbroad and restrictive uniform dress code policy” flouts state law, violates freedom of expression, and wastes teachers’ and students’ time and attention that would be better spent on education, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a suit filed Monday on behalf of six students and their parents.

Actually, the banning of Tigger-wear is probably among the least offensive results of their dress code, despite local affection at Howling Point for Tigger and other tigers.  According to the S.F. Gate article, one student was cited for wearing a shirt with the words “Jesus Freak” and another for wearing a pink Breast Cancer Awareness Ribbon.   Even if you accept that schools should be teaching appropriate expression by banning poor choices (like gang colors), there’s no way that banning all expression is an appropriate solution.

A city prosecutor was charged with indecency after a security camera caught him walking around naked in a government building after business hours.

Back in the day I used to feel guilty slipping off my shoes when I was working after hours. Now I have another reason to love working at home – no security cameras.

ESCONDIDO — The boys’ varsity water polo team at San Pasqual High School was defeated by its own Speedo swimsuits last week.The team was forced to forfeit its first preseason game Sept. 5 against Patrick Henry High after all but two team members were suspended from the game several days earlier for defying school administrators by wearing their Speedos at a school event.On Sept. 1, 15 of the team’s 17 players ran onto the school’s football field during “Jersey Night,” an event that honors the school’s athletes, wearing nothing but a swim cap and a Speedo swimsuit in front of a crowd of parents, students and staff members, the team’s coach said.

North County Times

Don’t know if it’s because I’ve been around pools too much, or some school administrators haven’t been out of their offices enough, but I’m just laughing. Not just at suburbanites getting their panties in a wad over men’s swimwear, but that some bureaucrat would expect some of the most aggressive, in-your-face athletes I’ve ever seen (water polo players) to not take such a silly order as a challenge.

Glad to see the coach sticking up for his team though.

“Why is this such a horrible, terrible thing? The boys were essentially showing spirit and enthusiasm for their sport,” [the boys' coach] said. “Nothing they did that night was intended to be offensive or derogatory in any manner.”
. . .
But [the coach] said many teams don’t have jerseys, and ultimately, his players were showing school spirit, which was what the event was all about.

Different team, same concept, from a calendar done by the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo team a few years back.

Sorry the team had to forfeit the game, but certainly hope they didn’t learn whatever lesson it was the school was trying to teach.