There are two issues here: the crine and the punishment. The fact is that we all agree that the phrasing was not appropriate. We disagree whether she should be fired on the spot or not. As someone wisely said, let the first stone to be thrown by… oops, I doubt any one of the CCers will step forward and declare themselves sin-free.
What Bunsen, you’re not sin free? I am so disillusioned! 
Nope. I just jaywalked to get Ellenos at the Market! 
It’s not about being perfect, though. It’s about judgment and discernment. The fact that she could believe these were appropriate things to say, really shows a deficiency of both. It’s nice that she “learned” something and is backtracking now, but it’s appalling that a person in that level of authority didn’t know ahead of time that those comments were entirely inappropriate.
Fine–she should keep her job. But let’s not expect that her entire level of judgment and understanding of appropriate behavior has suddenly done a 180. The incident shows character, or lack of, in action.
Indeed. She’s not a newly graduated teacher with 5 years or less under her belt. She’s a HS principal who presumably already had several years worth of teaching experience and/or grad Ed school training/admin experience above and beyond what new teachers usually get.
It’s like equating the mistakes of an entry level employee should be judged the same as that of a supervisor with 5+ years of experience under his/her belt. IME, that’s not how things actually go.
For instance, if an entry-level employee like yours truly violated company policy at several firms I worked at, the usual procedure is to give him/her a counseling statement, a haranguing, and one more chance during the probationary period. Most of those same violations would get someone with 5+ years of experience such as a supervisor/VP terminated or sometimes even sent to prison*.
- SEC/NASD violations arising from misstated figures. Even a slight misplacement of the decimal point can result in serious fines for the firm($1 million/day in the early-mid '00s) and possibly land the supervising manager/VP with a stint in prison (The "Buck stops here" principle in action).
“The incident shows character, or lack of, in action.”
That’s pretty judgmental.
^But why? Isn’t our character illustrated by our actions and our choices?
One incident is not indicative of a person’s overall character.
This wasn’t an off the cuff, oops, moment. These were words chosen to utter before a group of young people over whom she had great authority.
Shaking my head. How do we even know that those were chosen words and not something that was said without a prepared script?
Well, swaths of people are judgemental these days. In our zeal to be politically correct we have, as a society, become quite judgemental and intolerant. I find it ironic. I am sure this women has found this whole flap quite interesting.
Seems like the dress and fashion threads on these forums commonly bring out judgementalism among posters. It does not seem to be new.
I will be judgmental about adults who don’t understand boundaries. If you’ve made it through several decades of life and have presumably worked for quite some time with children and have not learned what is and isn’t appropriate to say… I’m going to judge.
And I will not apologize for being judgmental.
It seems very simple to me… and perhaps I’m just young and naive… but common decency seems to dictate that (almost always) if you have a thought about someone’s body or dress, you should keep it in your head.* Why does that thought need to come out of your mouth? Why do you need to tell someone they look a certain way- fat, thin, whatever- unless they’ve asked your opinion?
We can’t control our thoughts. We can control what comes out of mouths and fingertips (typing).
Once again- there’s a difference between “Leggings aren’t appropriate for work/school” and “Don’t wear leggings because you look fat.”
*Of course, there are exceptions.
I don’t know so much about controlling our speech, sometimes things come out that we didn’t intend to say in public. I remember my last public speech, over 25 years ago, that I made on my last day in the Air Force. I said how I enjoyed flying with them all…and then I looked over and saw my commander (who was a total jerk), and said, “Well, not everybody, actually.” And then decided to quickly end my speech. It just slipped out, and I haven’t done any public speaking of consequence since!
So I can definitely give someone a pass on a one time slipup.
I think her mistake was in saying what she said in a professional setting. My own mother told me that there are things that I couldn’t wear - I am less than 5’ tall and when I was 12, I went from nothing to a DD in the space of two months - on a 90-pound body. As I was growing up, my mother taught me that some things were inappropriate for me to wear. I taught my daughters that there are some things that are inappropriate or unflattering on their bodies. But I am their mother and I love them. The principal forgot that she wasn’t talking to her own kids whom she knows intimately and loves. Now I happen to agree that leggings look really disgusting when they are too tight, but I think that has less to do with the person’s size than with the size of leggings they choose to wear in comparison to their body size…
I don’t think she should be fired. She should be more careful. I also think this isn’t a very big deal. I hope I have taught my kids to separate what really matters from what can best be ignored, as well as how to calibrate the value of others’ opinions on various subjects. Not everyone’s opinion matters on every subject. What the principal thinks personally of students’ attire is zero on the scale.
When the principal made the statement to students at a formal function, it left the realm of personal opinion. She was speaking to them in an official capacity. Whether or not she’s fired is up to the district’s school board (and possibly their state education department). Personally, I think the comment shows a lack of the kind of judgment I’d want in a district leader.
I also don’t think women should get a free pass. If a male principal held an assembly and told a bunch of girls that leggings made them look fat, I don’t think people would shrug it off so easily. There’s really no justifiable excuse for speaking to children that way. District officials shouldn’t be noticing, much less judging, students’ bodies.
When I was in school certain fashion choices were talked about by everyone on campus. I had a friend in high school who had a very large chest, and the boys were brutal in their comments. The principal and teachers discussed a strategy for dealing with this with her since word went around and it was disruptive for her and the class. I can cite many other examples through the years.
Tight leggings might be a distraction on campus, so the principal might have been addressing a widespread issue. Personally I will be glad when leggings return to the gym and yoga studio.
As principal her purview is the school. It’s within the scope of her job to enforce the school’s dress code. That’s easy, and should be handled the way any other dress code violation is. “Sally, I see you’re wearing leggings with a t-shirt. You know that’s a dress code violation. Go to the nurse’s office to borrow the ugly grey sweatpants.”
It is not her responsibility to criticize her students’ fashion choices even if she doesn’t like them, and she has no business telling kids the clothing they may commonly wear in their off time makes them look fat.
This is how it worked when I was in high school, too. These days, I believe (and hope!), it is much more likely the principal and teachers would talk very sternly to the boys. I like this newer approach much better, myself. I have reached the point I don’t want to ever blame the girls for the boys behavior. If dress codes exist, I don’t want them to exist so boys aren’t distracted. Boys just have to learn not to be distracted. It’s an excellent life skill to have.
Parents enforcing their own dress codes is different than the school enforcing dress codes imho.I agree with Sue22 #77.
I don’t know if the Principal should be fired, but agree with Garland’s posts about character. I didn’t allow my kids to stay in classes with teachers who made unprofessional, potentially hurtful personal comments in class, so it seems I feel pretty strongly about the subject. I do think the student body needs to understand those comments are not acceptable, and they shouldn’t model that behavior. This is where I think it is a huge problem when principals and teachers mess up like this. They should be teaching by example and it bothers me a whole lot when they don’t. I am glad folks are sympathetic to this woman, but just think her behavior is really potentially damaging to a captive audience, and potentially creates a very unhealthy norm in that school. In my mind, these comments should have been absolutely unthinkable in those circumstances. So not really a slip-up or blurt out. imho. She has training. She should have known better.
It just really doesn’t seem to me an unreasonably high standard of behavior in a principal to find the remarks completely unacceptable. I guess I’m very surprised there is disagreement here on this board, and at least a sense among some this has something to do with PC culture. I do understand (and remember!) we used to treat girls like this all the time. We used to allow school paddlings as well. And told those being bullied it was probably their own fault. We got smarter about some things. Thank goodness.