Issue date: 9/20/05 Section: Front Page

Media Credit: Photo by Garrett Garms Dr. Felder, associae professor of Human Performance and Sports Science, gives hiws student specific guidelines for apperarance to help them obtain jobs.

Ronald Stevens, a WSSU senior and president of the Sports Management Club, knows firsthand how important it is to make a good impression, especially when it comes to a prospective employer. He also understands that you should always be dressed to impress, because you never know if the person you meet today will be your boss tomorrow.

"We kind of really shoot ourselves in the foot when we don't know how to present ourselves," he said. We already have one strike against us."

Steven's attitude is one that Dennis Felder, associate professor of Human Performance and Sports Science, has tried to instill in all members of the Sports Management Club. However, not everyone agrees with Felder's idea of what defines appropriate dress and grooming.

Two freshmen found themselves at odds with Felder and the club's rule when they refused to adhere to what's known as the "tenth rule" and cut their dreadlocks. According to Felder, this rule covers everything from wearing a hat or doo-rag indoors to particular hairstyles.

"I tell my students that you can't come into an educational building with a hat on your head or a doo-rag because they might do the same thing going to a job interview, and I can't take that chance," said Felder, who has worked at WSSU since 1984.

In the end, the two freshmen have been allowed to remain in the academic program, but they are not members of the club.

What is and what's not appropriate dress in the workplace and in school is an ongoing controversy, not only at WSSU but also across the nation. Numerous businesses and institutions adopt dress codes that limit, for example, the length of beards and hair for safety reasons. Outside of the U.S., in countries such as France, there has been legislation passed banning Muslim school girls from covering their faces with veils.

Here in the U.S., from a legal perspective, styles that are worn because of religious or cultural beliefs are protected under U.S. law. Rastafarians, for example, wear dreadlocks as an insignia of their religion, which originated in the Jamaica in the 1930s. But for others, such as actress Whoopi Goldberg, dreads are an expression of a personal preference.

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