Controversy over dress code notice in girls’ hall
Controversy has arisen over the dress code for the girls at Dhaka University’s Poet Sufia Kamal Hall.
The students said that a notice had been posted up around the hall, prohibiting the girls from wearing T-shirts with shalwars (loose pyjamas) in the hall premises. It said girls could at no time, day or night, wear indecent clothes (T-shirt over shalwar) in the hall.
No one could enter the hall office for any work in such an outfit. If they did, the hall authorities would take action, it said.
However, in the morning today, Thursday, fresh notices were posted up around the hall, these also being signed by the ‘hall authorities’.
Thursday’s notice declared that other than in the students’ rooms, verandas, bathrooms and personal spaces, proper dress must be worn when entering the offices/hall office.
The previous notice had gone viral on Facebook, creating a controversy. The hall authorities said that they hadn’t issued the previous notice and that the girls had issued it themselves. They said that they had issued the later notice.
The correspondent waited from 10:00 till 10:45 in the morning for comments from the hall authorities, but the hall provost, Sabita Rezwana, was in a board meeting.
A woman official of the hall, claiming to be a senior administrative officer, sent an SMS to the provost about the reporter waiting to meet her and even spoke to her.
The provost said she was busy and did not know when she would be able to come to the hall.
When the hall official claiming to be senior administrative officer was asked about the dress code controversy, she replied, on condition of anonymity, “This has been said for a long time, but some girls don’t listen.”
She refused to say anything further, other than that there were more persons in favour of the notice than against it.
In the afternoon, the hall’s residential teacher Fahmida Yasim told Prothom Alo over cell phone, “We have to work with about 2,200 girls, their parents, guests and others. Today’s notice deals with the hall’s internal affairs. But the hall authorities will not take responsibility for the notice which went viral on Facebook.”
She said that the notice on Facebook may have been deliberately posted up by certain students and the matter would be probed. “We have issued a rejoinder to Prothom Alo for publishing a report in this regard.”