The Liberty Human Rights Award is a prestigious
achievement given to honour those who inspire and stand up for human rights
throughout the world. This year, 12 year old school boy Chris Whitehead was
nominated simply for turning up to school in a skirt. Whitehead wore the skirt
in protest against what he felt was a discriminatory uniform policy. The young
attends Impington Village College near Cambridge, England.
The protest came during the Summer months when the
weather was hot and the students were sweating in their dark, long trousers.
Girls in the school started arriving wearing their dark school skirts, in line
with the uniform policy, but boys were refused allowance to exchange their
slacks for shorts. However, Whitehead, who is part of the school’s ‘student
executive’, found a loophole in the system.
In the college’s code, it states that students must dress
“smart”, they must dress in “plain black
tailored trousers or knee-length skirts without slits”. This is as much as it
says for this article of clothing, never specifying gender with regard to
skirts. Young Whitehead grabbed his opportunity to use this as means for
protest and with backing from his classmates, he arrived in May wearing his
younger sister’s knee-length skirt without a slit.
In November, The Daily Mail reported that Chris Whitehead
won the Liberty Human Rights Young Person of the Year, however this was false.
He came runner-up to a Cerie Bullivant who ran a full campaign against the
controversial Terrorism Prevention and
Investigation Measures bill in the UK.
Impington Village College, after
Chris Whitehead’s courageous protest, have decided to review their uniform
policy.
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