By GEORGIA WESTGARTH
RULES surrounding hair colour as it stands at Kooweerup Secondary College has sparked a fiery debate among students, parents and committee members at the school and online.
A petition pioneered by Year 10 student Mietta Manning has pitched students’ right to self-expression against the school’s long-standing ban on unnatural hair colour.
Sixteen-year-old Mietta wants to see the hair colour ban revoked, writing online: “We believe that students should not be forced to conform to overtly conservative community standards.”
Mietta had added red into her dark blonde hair over the 2014 Christmas holidays and was told by the school to dye it back to a natural colour in February this year.
Mietta’s mother Catherine Manning had advised her daughter to dye her hair during the school holidays due to the school uniform policy, and by term one the red dye had faded to orange.
Catherine – who is on the school’s parents’ association board – said her daughter and other students had dyed their hair red in the past and weren’t pulled up on it.
“Her faded red hair wasn’t as bright as some of the natural red hair at the school, but she was still asked to remove it,” Catherine explained.
Kooweerup Secondary College Principal of six years, Kym Bridgford, said the rules on uniform and natural hair colour had been in place at the school for many years.
“Ms Manning raised the issue earlier this year and in fairness we said we’ll ask the community and have run a two-month consultation process and asked people within the school community, including the school council, and it was almost a unanimous vote to maintain the current rules,” Kym said.
In response to the parents’ association decision, Mietta launched an online petition on Tuesday 28 July and has since received 600 signatures.
Today (Friday) freelance writer, broadcaster and public speaker Clementine Ford shared the petition with her 53,000 Facebook followers.
Mietta said the rule on hair colour was an ‘unjustifiable and discriminatory appearance based rule that has no bearing on education.’
“It is a ridiculous and arbitrary rule – I shouldn’t be banned from self-expression and individuality.
“I own my personal body and have the right to express myself through my physical appearance.
“I just want to experiment with hair colour and should be allowed to be responsible for my own physical appearance,” Mietta said.
With a lot of support from her peers, family and a contentious online discussion, Mietta is planning on taking the petition to the next school council meeting. Mum Catherine said Mietta hadn’t broken any rules.
“She’s old enough to drive a car and I’m sure she can make decisions on her own appearance.
“As teenagers they should be able to express themselves as part of self-development,” Catherine said.
After discovering Mietta’s petition the college has referred the matter to the legal branch at the Department of Education.
Kym said his legal branch advised the school to ignore the petition and is reviewing the language used in the petition.
“The school is entirely in its right to stick to current rules – we have had no concerns like this in the past.
“The process has run its course and has now ended and unfortunately one family doesn’t like the decision,” he said.
The school council and student representative council are yet to make a final decision on the issue.
