Disturbed by the distraction provocative dresses have become for university staff and students, many tertiary institutions have enacted urgent dress codes to curb the problem and limit the damage to the self esteem of everyone on the campus. The University of Ibadan (UI) is the latest to join the codification of dresses on campus. UI, said the report, has banned female students from wearing perforated and transparent clothes, low-neck blouses that expose breast, armpit and belly-button and tight skirts that reveal, in all its aggravating posture, the structure of the buttocks. No skirt that does not reach the knee, said the regulation, could be worn. Male students were similarly, but not acutely, affected. In general, the dress code expects them to remain men, not hybrids or dandies piercing ears and plaiting hair.

There are no reports to tell us how universities, which have enacted dress codes for their students, have fared. We do not know how well the schools have enforced the codes or for how long. We also have no inkling into what motivated the authorities to draw up the codes. Did offended students complain about the dresses? Were teachers distracted from doing their job or conducting research? Did the provocative dresses engender cultism and affect standards negatively? And have the sociology departments in these schools researched the reasons female students flaunt what materialists call their assets?

It seems that the dress codes were a product of general feelings rather than deep-rooted research. Everyone appears to feel horrified in a vague sense and expresses it without knowing concretely why. And the authorities also play along with the horrified university public by surrendering to the same paranoia. The reasons often given for cracking down on outrageous dresses, some analysts volunteer, are basically connected with religion, ethics and culture. Religion, because they say the dresses offend God and morality; ethics, because they say the dresses are depraved; and cultural, because the dresses are at war with our traditions and values.

The dress codes have, however, not diminished the outlandish and obscene taste for the unusual. A cursory inspection of many institutions show clearly the tenacious hold female students have on expressionist fashion where both what is hidden and what is exposed speak loudly to the viewer’s fantasies. And judging from the wording of the dress codes themselves, the authors seem to have excellent and sharp eyes for anatomising both the dresses and the dressed. The war over indecent dresses on campuses obviously cannot be won at the level of imposing codes, in spite of their engaging simplicity, and enforcing them. Have the university authorities never heard of moral suasion? Can’t they try to reason these things out with the students and persuade them to opt for change?