Cross-dressing Ban Unbecoming Morehouse

A new ban on cross-dressing at Morehouse College in Atlanta betrays the iconoclastic history of the all-male institution that educated African-American luminaries such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Spike Lee, says one writer.

Elizabeth Gates, a style correspondent for The Daily Beast, criticizes the recent "appropriate dress policy" that forbids "the wearing of clothing associated with women's garb (dresses, tops, tunics, purses, pumps, etc.) on the Morehouse campus or at college-sponsored events."

"For Morehouse to turn against the men that have chosen to hand over their hard-earned scholarships, loans, or family savings is unacceptable," writes Gates. "To tell a student that his sense of self is only as good as his ability to conform is to reduce this student, and Morehouse at large, to the exact consciousness it fought so hard to defeat."

Gates attended Spelman College, the sister institution of Morehouse, but says she left because of the stifling atmosphere that included antigay attitudes and violence.

"The year before I left, a boy was brutally beaten with a baseball bat in a bathroom stall at a Morehouse dorm for 'looking at' another student in the shower," Gates writes. "The victim was rushed to the hospital and underwent emergency brain surgery that saved his life. The abuser was sentenced to serve two consecutive 10-year sentences in prison. Astonishingly, the campus was left divided about whether or not the incident should be considered a hate crime."