Varsity imposes ban on wearing jeans, tights

Girls directed to wear knee-length kurtas, shalwars as well as white dupattas

PESHAWAR:

The Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Women University (SBBWU), Peshawar has introduced a new “modest” dress code for its students by banning the use of jeans and tights on the campus.

The university’s registrar office issued a formal notification in this regard in which students have been asked to strictly adhere to the new dress code.

“Students have to wear knee-length kurtas, shalwars, and white dupattas, which has been made compulsory for them as per the new dress code,” the notification read.

The university directed the students to wear their student cards on the university premises, warning them that the new code had been introduced after approval from the registrar office and violators would be imposed a fine of Rs1,000.

The issue of introducing a new dress code was not new as the former governor Shah Farman directed all the public universities to change its open dress code policy after he received complaints that the incidents of sexual harassment were on the rise in the varsities across K-P.

It seemed that K-P Governor Haji Ghulam Ali had been following in the footsteps of his predecessor as he himself hailed from the highly conservative JUI-F.

Earlier, the Hazara University Abbotabad, the Bacha Khan University Charsadda, and the University of Peshawar introduced these dress codes which invited widespread criticism.

In March 2021, the Kohat University of Science and Technology (KUST) also introduced a dress code, asking girl students to wear abaya.

In a notification issued on March 9, the KUST administration directed its boy students to either wear white shalwar kameez or grey dress pants with black shoes.

The girl students had been asked to wear white shalwar with any kameez of full sleeves, scarf, dupata, chaddar, black abaya and black shoes. In the winters, they had to wear black sweaters, coats or plain jackets with black abayas.

Furthermore, the faculty members were also directed to wear a formal dress with black gown in the classes.

This policy was implemented from the spring semester (March 15, 2021).

Earlier, the University of Hazara banned skin tight jeans, shorts, earrings and make-up which invited widespread criticism on social media. Similarly, the BKU Charsadda even asked its staffers not to wear jeans. After the criticism, the UoP issued a clever notification regarding the dress code. It simply asked the girl students to wear shalwar kameez instead of mentioning jeans, tights or shorts. This pattern was also followed by KUST in order to avoid criticism.

The KUST official said that the governor wanted a conservative dress code for the university students and universities were just obeying the instruction.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, April 2^nd, 2023.