Who’ll Dress for Success?

“The clothes make the man,” was taught as a theme of Elizabethan literature in my high school English class. I learned that the sentiment isn’t necessarily out of date in a watering hole 20 years ago. I was debating a guy in a coat and tie about US foreign policy while adorned myself in Levis and a golf shirt. Despite citing dates and sources – that my adversary was lacking — a non-participant observer chimed in “I believe him because he’s the one in a suit.” Both sides of the argument chuckled at the deduction. Judge Chamberlain Haller, in My Cousin Vinny, sounded a bit like the redneck who ruled against me ordering attorney Vincent Gambini to: “look lawyerly” … “in a suit” … “made of some kind of cloth.” Protocols: An Operatin... Huberman Ph.D., Andrew D. Buy New $29.40 (as of 01:42 UTC - Details)

Emphasis on sartorial propriety has now taken a foothold at Tuskegee University. They have adopted a dress code in the belief that collegiate standards have withered to slovenly levels. No such demand would have occurred to the administration in 1950. Students most everywhere were stylish of their own accord back then. Looking like a bum would not bring out the kind of attention anyone wanted from the opposite sex, nor inspire much keenness from the prof.

Can you imagine the uproar if a predominantly white institution had beaten Tuskegee to this punch? The pallid brain-trust that gave us the Smithsonian’s “Whiteness Chart” would rule it as some kind of Aryan attack on minorities. Authors of this ridiculous document, like Tema Okun, have yet to gather a clue how insulting it is to people with complexions less pale than theirs. Henry David Thoreau, Greta Thunberg or even the Unabomber never went this far with demands to dismantle modern lifestyles. The tract seethes with loathing for all that makes comfort, or even survival, possible.

One of the more befuddling points in the litany of whitely toxic things went: “Must always “do something” about a situation.” Where, we need to ask, do the Okuns of the world find people who manage in idle existence without bothering to fix stuff that goes wrong?

Tuskegee is ahead of the curve acting upon the knowledge that a college education is being taken less seriously as a credential than ever before. The ones in charge there know that higher education breaks down to babblocracy without standards. Thinking a shirt should be pressed isn’t a bad place to start. It would be silly to believe business attire is a mark of erudition. But it would be oblivious not to notice that huge numbers of college kids are in need of a swift boot to the seat of their unfancy pants. They don’t need to be toeing lines like a military company in formation, but losing any sense of decorum can dull a young brain.

There are those who hold that blacks have to be twice as good as whites to get anywhere. Wherever anyone stands on that, Tuskegee is more than probably onto something. It can’t hurt those Golden Tigers to sidestep the basse couture trend now chic on campuses where “preppy” used to prevail. A prof who suits up to teach won’t be uplifted looking at a class garbed like 24/7 denizens of the local park.

If YouTube is anything to go by, the so-called culture wars have crossed color lines completely. The podcasters laying into left-wanking with the most vengeance can be more akin to the demography of the NBA than the NHL. It was inevitable. Slouching and carelessness gets tiresome quickly. Plenty of black posters beat Matt Walsh at his own game, without a hint of woke and a fraction of the wordiness. “You’re pushin’ too hard” The Seeds told us 50 years ago. The cultural pressure to accept lameness and relaxed standards tested the patience of administration at a southeastern black university faster than it did Harvard and kin. In striving for “sensitivity” they’ve become nearly insensate. Northeastern academia’s swirl down the bowl may be too deep in the eddy for rescue. NO GRID Survival Projects Claude Davis Buy New $37.00 (as of 06:16 UTC - Details)

I once sat next to two George Washington University professors grading essays in a coffee shop. One of them said, “The bad ones are a lot harder to get through than the good ones.” If you delve into what passes for theses that are online these days, it’s getting mighty hard finding the good ones. Meanwhile, at another coffee shop years later, I had a conversation with two GW undergrads. Neither knew what their school’s athletic team name, the Sentinels, meant. The word isn’t challenging enough to appear on a Reader’s Digest vocabulary test.

It’s said that every aging generation finds that the kids aren’t alright. When you hear “Why back in my day …,” actually back in that day the fogies were the butts of a lot of derision then too. But at least the kids who matriculated knew what “derision” meant.

With what’s going on in the Ivy League and other northeast coast edifices of education, it’s like a refreshing Atlantic plunge on a sweltering summer day to see this Alabaman institution leading them out of the desert. We can only hope they’ll go further down this path. Most of us have heard and seen enough from students – who not uncommonly sound like patients in a booby hatch – running the asylum. Whatever historical or cultural angle you’re coming from, knowing your stuff and looking sharp can’t harm your cause.

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