Kentucky high school hair policy draws national attention

“I’m getting ready for the first day of school, and I shouldn’t have to be anxious about my natural hair being against the rules and being seen as not clean or not neat”, Butler student Ashanti Scott said.

Butler Traditional High School had a hair policy that prohibited dreadlocks, cornrows (though the school wrote cornrolls), hair twists, braids, mohawks and any styles that are “extreme, distracting or attention-getting”.

Bulter Traditional High School in Louisville has a hair policy that states that students can not have their hair in cornrows, braids, twists, and dreadlocks, NBC affiliate WKYC reports.

“And to find myself this year addressing an issue that stinks of forcing gender conformity, stinks of institutional racism – it says we have so much further to go with our public school system”, said Scott, as per WLKY.

In the wake of the backlash, superintendent Donna Hargens asked other school councils to examine their dress code policies, the Courier-Journal reported. “There is also a process for a civil rights violation lawsuit”.

In Kentucky, dress code policies are left up to schools’ decision-making councils. “It’s clear black culture is the target of this outrageous new policy”. “I was like, oh my God, that would mean I wouldn’t be able to wear my hair to the school, which is in locs”, Scott recalls. “Additionally, we are reaching out to all school SBDM Councils, encouraging them to review their own dress code policies now in place”. “I’m not going to do it, and no other person should have to do it”, Attica Scott said.

Stories about kids being told to change their hairstyles pop up regularly – such as those about teens in Georgia and Florida who were singled out for having their hair dyed an “unnatural color”.

Concern about the hair policy of Butler Traditional High School has led to a meeting. In 2014, a 12-year-old private school student in Florida blew up the Internet over reports that she was threatened with expulsion over her naturally “puffy” hair being a “distraction”.

Scott’s Tweet prompted a number of responses, some of which questioned the policy’s legality.

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