HOKE COUNTY, N.C. -- A North Carolina mother is outraged after her 16-year-old daughter was scolded for wearing an off-the-shoulder shirt and told she would not be allowed to ride the bus home from school on Friday in Hoke County.
“We are very sure what happened to us is inappropriate, unfair, and frankly unsafe,” India Middleton explained.
The mother posted a video, viewed nearly half a million times on Facebook, showing Makhigha sitting outside school by herself, the doors to the building locked and teachers all gone.
“I was kind of scared, because I was there alone, and the doors are locked, and I don’t have a phone. So I can’t reach anybody if something happens,” the junior said.
Last spring, an honor roll student at Hickory Ridge High School captured national attention when she was suspended for 10 days and told she couldn’t walk in her graduation after wearing an off-the-shoulder top to school.
In the fall, a Charlotte Mecklenburg seventh grader said she was made to feel like a sex object after her school’s principal changed the length requirement for shorts, supposedly to make sure boys weren’t distracted.
CMS dress code prohibits students from wearing tube tops, shirts with thin straps and low necklines just to name a few. Hoke County also enforces a dress code, but it’s more open to interpretation.
Since Makhigha’s mother didn’t see the shirt as provocative, she said the code should be more specific, so her daughter never feels as humiliated as she did on Friday.
“She does not want to go back to school. So today was actually her first full day back,” Middleton said.
Hoke County schools issued this statement to local affiliate WTVD:
"Hoke County Schools will not make excuses for the poor judgment demonstrated by the assistant principal. The best course of action would have been to allow the student to get on the bus Friday. All administrators understand that if a child is pulled from a bus then they are responsible for that child's supervision until they are safely picked up by a parent.”