A Texas middle school is banning students from wearing all-black clothing because school officials say it’s associated with mental health issues.

Students at Charles Middle School in El Paso, Texas, headed back to school Monday, days after a letter from Principal Nick DeSantis outlined the school’s new dress code policy. The letter says the school is eliminating all-black clothing because it is “associated with depression and mental health issues and/or criminality.”

Norma De La Rosa, the president of El Paso Teachers Association, explained in more detail why the policy is in place and what clothing is allowed. She says teachers see a sudden change in students going from dressing with color to all black when they are depressed or stressed.

Many parents and community members disagree with the policy, commenting online that clothing color doesn’t define a person’s mental state.

“The color of clothing has nothing to do with your ability to do anything or feel any emotion,” Alex Lucero said.

“Making students wear a different color isn’t going to magically make them a completely different person,” Alexis Contreras said.

  • Darkassassin07
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    4 months ago

    Kids are sad and they display it by wearing black clothing.

    Instead of doing anything about the kids mental health; we ban them from showing they’re sad?

    Brilliance from texas as always.

    • Elise@beehaw.org
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      4 months ago

      I deal with mental health issues and trust me when I say that that’s totally what people think. I’ve even internalized it to the point where I push my emotions down like it’s nothing. Of course that doesn’t work one bit.

      Back in the day you would’ve simply gone for drugs like alcohol or go down the drain some other way.

  • Soup@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    “These kids are sad and I don’t want to see them be sad. Emphasis on the ‘see’, of course, because who actually gives a shit amirite?”

    I also love the “and/or criminality” part. Like bro if that were the case maybe ban ill-fitting suits or boat shoes or something, fuck. What a bunch of dipshits.

  • dactylotheca@suppo.fi
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    4 months ago

    Every day I manage to be surprised at how mind-bogglingly stupid conservatives are.

    Well, surprised but also not surprised at all.

    • Got_Bent@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I don’t know that I’d include El Paso in the Texas conservative category you’re probably thinking of. It’s much closer in culture, demographics, and geography to a mixture of Mexico and New Mexico, both of which it borders.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        I don’t know that I’d include El Paso in the Texas conservative category you’re probably thinking of.

        It’s a classic small-c economically conservative community, prone to embrace these superficial fixes rather than doing anything that might cost money.

    • Elise@beehaw.org
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      4 months ago

      Think about this for a second:

      Take all the stupid shit you’ve done and said in your life. For argument’s sake let’s say you are absolutely average in terms of stupidity. That means 50% of people are more stupid than you.

      And now imagine that again, but with your capacity for noticing your own stupidity. Obviously there’s stuff you’ve missed. 50% of people will have a lower capacity to notice their own stupidity.

      I think it’s safe to say that the distribution is a bell curve. That means 50% of people are sort of average. But 25% will be significantly below that and 10% of the total will be severely stupid.

      Safe to say stupidity is a powerful force in this world.

      Then we are not talking even yet about mental disorders. Iirc schizophrenia has an occurrence of roughly 2%, and so does psychopathy. Of course not all people with shizo are unable to manage it, and not all psychos are evil. But it’s still a lot of people!

      • dactylotheca@suppo.fi
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        4 months ago

        And before anyone barges in saying “that’s not how averages work”, first of all you mean the, uh, mean – both the mean and the median are averages.

        Second, intelligence probably follows a distribution that’s reasonably close to Gaussian (at least on a smaller scale) just like more or less literally all biological variables do. And I don’t mean IQ, but the general idea that cognitive performance – however the hell you define it – is going to vary from person to person and it’s going to approximately follow a Gaussian curve. The upshot of this is that the median is probably very close to the mean.

        • Elise@beehaw.org
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          4 months ago

          Thanks for expanding on that. Can you say something about the difference between a bell curve and a gaussian curve?

          • dactylotheca@suppo.fi
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            4 months ago

            Oh there’s no difference, “bell curve” is just a more colloquial term for a normal distribution. “Normal distribution”, “Gaussian distribution / curve” and “bell curve” all mean the same thing.

            Wouldn’t be math if there wasn’t 736 different names for the same thing 😆

            • Elise@beehaw.org
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              4 months ago

              Oh sorry, I quick read over the first sentence and missed it. Long day yesterday!

  • apotheotic (she/her)@beehaw.org
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    4 months ago

    And furthermore, we have banned children from blowing their noses, because we see a sharp rise in the number of sick children when they start blowing their noses.

    • Comment105@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      Chicken noodle soup is banned, as it is correlated with the flu. We pray that this may put a stop to this senseless productivity killer.

  • Nougat@fedia.io
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    4 months ago

    You know what middle schoolers have in spades? The time and inclination to fuck with authority. I see a whole bunch of students at that school showing up with black shoes, black pants, black shirts … and rainbow socks.

  • Zip2@feddit.uk
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    4 months ago

    But surely even Texans aren’t stupid enough to believe this would actually work, are they?

    Oh hang on, they believe in the power of prayer. Move along.

  • averyminya@beehaw.org
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    4 months ago

    Yeah… Prohibiting students from wearing gang colors in middle school didn’t prevent our kids from being involved in gangs. Nor did it prevent gang related fights.

    All it did was prevent self expression for regular kids.

  • Zachariah@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Just because the people running the school have concerns about their own mental health, doesn’t mean the kids should suffer.