COLLEGE CHAPLAIN

Uniform Love

Wearing school uniforms and enforcing them can seem like a worn out battle. When I was in high school, we had a teacher who policed uniform to such an extent that wearing a Polo Ralph Lauren sweatshirt on a Mufti Day (complete with American flag logo) saw you placed on uniform detention for committing treason! While etiquette extremism of that nature is thankfully not the modus operandi at our College, we do still pride ourselves in wearing our uniform with…pride? I would argue that while we are proud of our College and clothe ourselves in such a fashion, the motivation for wearing our uniform, and wearing it well, should spring from something more radical—love.

One of the basic functions of any school uniform is to minimise perceptions of being isolated or ostracised. If you wear your uniform then you will look, to an understandable and comfortable extent, like everyone else. This is meant to be a freeing experience. Those questions of uncertainty—What to wear? Will I fit in? Are ties in right now?—they all dissolve away when a school has a uniform.

A high school a few suburbs over from where I grew up in Sydney, initially began with a ‘no uniform policy’, but within a short time, students pushed for everyone to wear a white polo shirt and jeans. This was largely to alleviate the stress of how to belong to their school.

Removing these barriers to social cohesion through a uniform is simple, but in practice, there can be significant challenges when students fail to grasp its basic intention. Missing this intention does not always spring from disobedience, largely it begins with an admirable desire, such as being unique, identifiable and distinguishable in a crowd. No one wants to be forced to conform to the point that the traits that we love about ourselves are quashed, and the College has no desire to impinge on this either. 

Nevertheless, these desires, like all of our hearts’ affections, can become misplaced. In seeking to mark yourself out, you can actually reignite those tensions and uncertainties for others. When you choose to roll your skirt up at the waist, pull your shirt out, tug the knot of your tie into a mangy rope, you distress those who just want to be accepted. Wearing your uniform contrary to College guidelines puts pressure on other students to conform to your uniform agenda. You are actually doing the opposite of what you intended in the first place! 

If this misplaced desire continues then relatively quickly a new uniform policy emerges amongst students; not one policed with detentions or diary notes, but with laughs, labels and being left out. Thinking that you’re free to fit in by wearing a uniform is now compounded with the threat of being ridiculed and the concession that you’re going against College guidelines. It’s an anxious place to be.

This is where love comes in. When I was a Head of Year, we had two mottos: ‘Put on your game face’ and ‘Put on love’. The first reminded students that they were responsible for their own learning and life at the College. The second reminded them that they were responsible for the learning and life of others too.

When students choose to wear their uniform incorrectly they are actively choosing not to love their peers. They are choosing to create an environment of anxiety and moral dilemmas for others, and it is an active choice; ties don’t passively dishevel themselves, nor do skirts miraculously hitch upwards. Each morning there is an opportunity to put on love for your College community when the top button is done up, when the nail polish is left on the bathroom vanity and when the tie is freshly affixed each day!

Love has to be the motivation for all that we do, including wearing our uniform because it is the lynchpin of our actions. When the Apostle Paul urges the Colossians to show patience, humility and forgiveness in forbearance with one another, he urges them ‘over all these virtues [to] put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity’ (Colossians 3:14). Paul’s motivation for this imperative comes from his faith in the self-sacrifice of Christ, who put others before himself not just to remove anxiety, but all doubt, fear and guilt. If we have love as the starting point for wearing our uniforms then the battles over policing it and the anxiety over being ostracised melt away. Moreover, we strive toward reorienting those misplaced desires of our hearts, for the sake of others. 

So you don’t have to love your uniform, but uniform love is something we should strive to put on each day.

Gareth Tyndall | College Chaplain