UK college dress code gets gender shake-up
Print Edition
The head of a college at one of Britain’s oldest universities has rewritten a 650-year-old dress code to allow transgender students to dress how they choose at formal events with activists hoping other colleges will follow suit.
Mark Elliot, the dean of St Catharine’s College at Cambridge University, reworded the dress code after a campaign spearheaded by American transgender student Charlie Northrup, who transitioned from male to female earlier this year.
Previously male students had to wear smart trousers and jacket with a tie at formal events while women had to wear a skirt and blouse or dress but now students can choose to wear what they like as long as it is “suitably smart dress.”
“‘Smart dress’ is defined without reference to considerations of gender identity or expression,” states the revised dress code published on the college’s website.
A college spokesman declined further comment.
Northrup welcomed the move that comes as transgender rights become hotly contested globally with US President Barack Obama notching up a presidential first by using the word “transgender” in this year’s State of the Union address.
“Men can wear dresses, women can wear suits, and non-binary people are free to define the outfits that feel most appropriate to them in a formal setting,” Northrup told the university student newspaper, Varsity.
The post-graduate student studying classics later tweeted: “Even changing the world in a small way feels extraordinary — Congrats @Catz_Cambridge.”
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