School Bans Female Students From Showing "Sausage Rolls" at Graduation

Sure, everyone wants high school students to show a little decorum on graduation day, but it's the administrators who showed an utter lack of tact this week, when they sent a dress-code packet so laden with insensitive, sexist comments, it was hard to find a single sentence that wasn't offensive.

The letter from Biglerville High School in Pennsylvania, which was shared on senior Brianna Burtop's Facebook page, instructed men to wear khakis or dress slacks and a collared shirt and mandated they pull up their pants because it'd be "a really bad look to be walking in hanging on to your drawers to keep them from falling down."

But that wasn't close to the worst of it.

For the "ladies," school officials wrote about the importance of modest attire, namely, "no bellies showing, keep 'the girls' covered and supported, and make sure that nothing is so small that all your bits and pieces are hanging out." The letter even referenced a teacher named Mrs. Elliott when reminding students they don't want "to be looking at 'sausage rolls.'" Their tip for making sure to avoid such a misstep? "As you get dressed, remember that you can't put 10 pounds of mud in a five-pound sack."

We understand the urge for schools to request certain attire guidelines for special events such as graduation — or even prom, another high school rite of passage rife with dress-code controversy — but singling out female students as the ones who need to keep their "sausage rolls" in check is both sexist and a form of body shaming you'd hope never to see in a school, of all places.

We wish the students of Biglerville High School well on graduation day, and we hope that whatever they wear, they walk that stage proud of their accomplishments.