Another dance, another Utah dress code controversy

Students at a Utah high school staged a walkout on Monday after multiple girls were turned away from Saturday’s homecoming dance because of dress code violations.

Administrators said they turned away “three or four girls” because their dresses were deemed inappropriate, but one student at Bingham High School in South Jordan, a suburb of Salt Lake City, said otherwise.

“Three or four girls might have gone home and didn’t come back, but the amount stopped was about 100,” Cierra Gregson told KSL.

Some students said the dress code was too strict (dresses have to cover the chest and back “at the armpit”), and parents said their issue was with how the girls were treated.

“They had them standing there in the middle of the hall and be judged,” one parent said. “It was kind of shameful and demeaning.”

Dress code debacles are a fairly regular occurrence at Utah schools. In June, a Salt Lake City school apologized for adding sleeves to some girls’ yearbook photos.

In Feb. 2013, a middle school student was barred from school after school administrators said the red shade she dyed her hair was unnatural. In May 2012, a middle school student was sent home from a school in Tooele because her skirt was half an inch too short. And a few months later, a Tooele-area high school had to hold a “replacement prom” after dozens of students were sent home from their prom because of their dresses.