CLYDE, Texas (KTAB/KRBC) — A male Texas high school student says he’s no longer under in-school suspension for wearing nail polish, as he continues to advocate for a dress code policy change.
Clyde High School Senior Trevor Wilkinson says the Clyde Consolidated Independent School District tried to reach a “middle ground,” on his in-school suspension. However, this did not happen as Wilkinson believes this “middle ground” is still unfair.
“My superintendent and principal tried to respectfully find a middle ground for us to meet on to kind of put this away, but unfortunately I could not do that middle ground, I could not meet them there,” said Wilkinson.
“The middle ground that they wanted was: I take off my nails and in return, they’ll let me speak at the board meeting. But I could not do that because I’ve been to a board meeting before and I spoke about a lot of these things and nothing happened, so I decided to not take the middle ground and to actually stand my ground on this.”
Trevor Wilkinson, Clyde High School Senior
Wilkinson was punished for violating the Clyde High School dress code, which states boys are not allowed to paint their nails. Wilkinson says he thinks the policy is sexist and can be offensive to students’ sexual orientations.
The Clyde CISD has a “special meeting” scheduled on Thursday to discuss the issue.
Additionally, the American Civil Liberties Union wrote a letter to the school district asking them to reexamine the dress and grooming code policies that are “unconstitutional and discriminatory.”
Wilkinson has collected over 160,000 signatures on the petition he started ‘Allow Males to Wear Nail Polish’.
Wilkinson continues to advocate for the dress code policy change and hopes that the outcome of the meeting being held on Thursday will allow him and other students to “freely” express themselves.
