UNILAG's dress code
S IR: It was not with total satisfaction that I read your newspaper's editorial on Wednesday July 14, 2004, titled "Dress code in Nigerian universities". The article fully supported the dress code, referring to the indecent dressing on our campuses and lauding the UNILAG Senate for taking such a strict decision concerning it. It is well enough for non-students to sit somewhere and support such decisions. They are not on the receiving end of the code.
The University of Lagos seeks to ensure moral discipline among its students by imposing its own moral views on them. This article does not support indecent dressing; the writer just wants to plead with the UNILAG Senate to concentrate on the students' welfare in terms of accommodation and hostel facilities, transportation, classroom facilities and so fourth. These are the problems students face everyday and are more important than how they look outwardly. The authorities seem to be forgetting that human psychology, especially among youths who dominate the university, inclines one to be daring, to do the unexpected. It is one thing to make a law, and another thing entirely to enforce them.
As a student, what is the use of going to the university to study, and dressing decently, if you wake up early only to find that there is no water to bathe with, the bathrooms and toilets are unbelievably filthy, and when you finally find water and take your bath, you go out and queue for over 30 minutes just to get a cab, only to get to the class and not be able to get a seat, and when the lecturer comes in, the Public Address system is out of order. So the reason for being at school is lost, because of the problems which need attention. These are the things one would expect the Senate to be thinking more about and how to improve the living conditions of their students, than how they look or dress.
With the ultimate reason for attending the university at the risk of being lost, a dress code seems like a triviality to the students. We have a lot more to worry about than how decent we look. This is not undermining the importance of decent dressing, but highlighting the factors that would make life easier for students, and give them a reason to want to dress decently. A dress code is alright, but if UNILAG cares so much about the moral outlook of its students, rather than their welfare in their academic pursuit, then the authorities need to rediscover their priorities.
Esegbunyota Eghagha,
University of Lagos.
