Students at Curé-Antoine-Labelle High School in Laval, north of Montreal, are protesting Thursday after they say their school’s administration started pushing what they call a “sexist” dress code.
“She [a member of the staff] said that my knees were attractive to the boys. I didn’t understand why,” said student Isabelle Drouin. “She just said that word for word. Your knees are attractive to the boys; you have to go home.”
The students say that as temperatures began rising outside, they started receiving warnings about the length of their shorts.
“It’s a bit humiliating, I’d say, to be discriminated by shorts,” said Talie Cloutier, a Secondary 5 student.
She insists the measures almost exclusively affect female students.
“The shorts we wear as students cover our bodies in a respectable way and don’t let anything inappropriate show,” she wrote in a letter to Noovo Info.
The Sec 5 student points out that the school’s ventilation system is lacklustre and claims there is no air conditioning.
“Temperatures are therefore higher inside the classrooms than outside,” she said. “These temperatures don’t create an environment conducive to education.”
In a notice to parents, the school’s administration states that according to the dress code, “the minimum length for shorts and bermudas must be near the knee.”
The message goes on to state that “if a student is found to be non-compliant, they will have to change their clothes, if they have any with them, or they will be sent home to change.”
CTV News asked officials with Curé-Antoine-Labelle High School for comment but were redirected to the Centre de services scolaire de Laval.